


The Secret Siren's Songs

by memorysdaughter



Category: Frozen (Disney Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Detectives, Disabled Character, Gen, Group Homes, Mental Health Issues, Missing Persons, Schizophrenia, Singing, how many Frozen II references can your author sneak in, it's a lot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:55:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21897766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/memorysdaughter/pseuds/memorysdaughter
Summary: Anna Aren-Dell has been working since her parents’ death to make sure that her older sister, Elsa, is taken care of.  After a suicide attempt caused by the voices in her head, Elsa now lives in a group home, preferring to spend much of her day in the backyard, staring at something just over the chain-link fence surrounding it.  Things are finally as normal as they’re going to get, so when Anna finds strange drawings and writings among Elsa’s belongings, her first instinct is to ignore them.  But when Elsa’s drawings turn out to be the faces of young women who are as “different” as Elsa is, all of whom have gone missing in the past month, Anna’s faced with the realization that something darker might be behind Elsa’s scribblings.  Working with the enthusiastic group home manager, Olaf, and a local police officer and his faithful K9 companion, Kristoff and Sven, as well as two somewhat-suspicious locals, Yelana and Maren, Anna takes Elsa on a “journey into the unknown” to find the missing women.
Relationships: Anna & Elsa (Disney)
Comments: 20
Kudos: 94





	1. Chapter 1

[ ](https://ibb.co/6PRVRQ8)

On Mondays Anna leaves work a little early to go to the group home. She leaves her sketches and swatches at her desk, turns off the lamp, closes the door to her little office at Wandering Oaken’s Fine Interior Design, and drives out into the beautiful countryside and up the hill to Sunny Pines.

It’s late afternoon when she gets there. One of the smiling aides lets her in and she goes into the office to talk to the group home manager, Olaf. There’s never much change in Elsa’s condition, and if there is, like the time Elsa ran a high fever and seized for an hour and had to be taken to the hospital, Olaf will call. He gives her a hug and lets her go down the hallway to Elsa’s room.

Elsa has her own room at the end of the hallway, painted light blue. It’s very welcoming, with a snowflake-patterned quilt and blue sheets on the bed, blue and silver curtains in the window, a white desk and a white dresser, and a mobile overhead made of light blue, silver, and white snowflakes. Anna usually takes a few seconds to just stand at the doorway and appreciate the overall effect. She was the one who designed it, after all; she can take some time enjoying her efforts.

Then she goes about her few tasks: tidying up whatever she sees as messy, taking Elsa’s dirty laundry hamper out of the closet to bring home with her, and putting the clean clothes and sheets away. It’s always the same things: jeans, light blue T-shirts, dark blue hooded sweatshirts, light blue socks, white underwear. She cleans out Elsa’s hairbrush and checks to make sure Elsa has enough shampoo, conditioner, bodywash, toothpaste, and hair ties. She plugs in Elsa’s iPad and the accompanying blue wireless headphones. She changes the CD in the CD player Elsa listens to at night.

Once all that is finished, she goes out back to see Elsa.

* * *

It’s a Monday in early fall when Anna sees the first drawing. She plugs in the iPad and it pops up as the device begins charging. A woman’s portrait is on Elsa’s screen, dark hair, blue eyes, wistful expression, red sweater. The face is suddenly familiar, intricately detailed down to freckles and a little scar through one eyebrow, and Anna wishes she could remember where she’d seen this woman before. She takes a photo of the iPad’s screen with her phone, and puts her phone back in her pocket.

When she opens the door to the backyard, wind catches her hair and teases it gently. Anna smiles. She loves the fall.

Her sister Elsa stands with her back to the group home, hands tucked into the pockets of her hooded zip-up sweatshirt. Her long blond braid trails down her back. She doesn’t turn to acknowledge Anna, not even when Anna stands right next to her.

“Hi, Elsa,” Anna says. Leaves swirl around the fence in front of them. “Did you have a good week?”

One of Elsa’s hands comes out of her sweatshirt pocket and gently curls around Anna’s arm. Anna waits patiently.

“I’m still hearing them,” Elsa says.

“No, you’re not,” Anna tells her. “Your medicine helps make the voices go away.”

Elsa’s fingers tense on Anna’s arm, and Anna fights the desire to pull away.

“They’re _different_ ones,” Elsa says, her voice lower, plaintive. She still hasn’t turned to look at Anna, but Anna hears desperation in her voice. “These ones are real.”

“Elsa, they’re hallucinations,” Anna says gently. “They’re caused by chemical imbalances in your brain. The medicine helps them go away.”

“No, Anna, this one’s _real,”_ Elsa repeats firmly. “She’s calling to me.”

“Oh, Elsa,” Anna says softly. She tucks a stray strand of hair back into Elsa’s braid.

“You don’t believe me.”

“I believe that you think something is happening.”

“That’s not the same!” Elsa’s fingers tighten on Anna’s arm.

“I want to help you,” Anna says.

“Then let me follow her.”

Anna takes Elsa’s hand from her arm and holds it. Elsa’s fingers are freezing and Anna makes a mental note to buy her sister some gloves. “You have to stay here. You’re safe here.”

Elsa finally turns to look at Anna. Her eyes are dull and empty, and Anna’s heart nearly breaks. She remembers bright-eyed Elsa, story-telling Elsa who played dress-up with their mother’s old dresses, the Elsa who built fairy villages for them out of blocks, the smart, beautiful Elsa who went away to college on a scholarship for vocal performance and music. This isn’t her Elsa. This is the Elsa whose stories are repetitive, on a loop through her brain with nowhere to go. This is the Elsa who notices so little about most of her surroundings that Anna can’t begin to count the number of times they’ve ended up in the emergency room because Elsa picked up a hot pan with her bare hands or walked straight off a porch or fell in the shower - part of the reason Anna knew Elsa could no longer stay at home. This is medication-brain Elsa, who says food tastes like gravel and the letters in books no longer stay still for her.

Anna misses her sister.

But she knows how close Elsa is to the edge. She knows how it feels to sit by Elsa’s bedside in ICU, waiting for Elsa to wake up from an overdose, the one that had convinced Anna to find a safe place for Elsa to live. She knows how it feels to leave Sunny Pines each week, her sister a prisoner behind the group home’s fences for her own safety. She knows their apartment, the silent, empty room that used to be Elsa’s.

Anna’s trying to love this sister.

Some days it’s hard.

“I want to go home,” Elsa says quietly.

“You are home,” Anna says.

“No, I’m not.”

“This is where you live.”

“But it’s not home.”

“Elsa.”

Elsa puts her head down.

“C’mere,” Anna says, and she wraps Elsa in a hug. Elsa doesn’t pull away, and after a few seconds Anna feels her shoulders start shaking in sobs.

“I need to help her,” Elsa cries. “She’s alone and she’s scared!”

“Elsa, she’s not _real,”_ Anna protests.

Elsa presses her head into Anna’s shoulder and weeps.

* * *

“She seems insistent that she’s really hearing a voice,” Anna tells Olaf.

The short, stubby group home manager points his chopsticks at her. “How can you be sure she’s not?”

“Because she’s a diagnosed schizophrenic?” Anna replies archly.

“Lots of things we hear or see aren’t experienced by anyone else,” Olaf says, untroubled by Anna’s answer. He takes another bite of noodles. “What are the odds that this one time, Elsa is actually hearing someone?”

“They’re super-low.”

“And yet…?”

“There is no ‘and yet,’” Anna answers. “Where is she hearing the voice from? Who does it sound like? When does she hear it? What is it saying? What’s it asking for?”

Olaf shrugs. “Why are you asking _me?”_

Anna sighs. “Anyone ever tell you that you’re impossible?”

“Impossibly handsome,” Olaf answers, and grins at her.

“Just… make sure she doesn’t climb the fence and go looking for whoever it is she thinks is asking for her help.”

“If there’s someone out there who needs help, and Elsa finds them, I’ll open the gate myself and she can take me with her,” Olaf says. “I promise.”

“Olaf,” Anna says. “You’re not supposed to _indulge_ her hallucinations.”

“We’re all on different journeys, Anna.”

“You are supposed to _protect_ her.”

“I’m supposed to _support_ her, and sometimes those are two different things.” Olaf takes another bite of noodles. “Now, is there anything else I can help you with?”

“You didn’t help me with the one thing I needed your help with!”

“Then I’ve still got it.” Olaf grins. “Go home, Anna. I promise Elsa is safe here.”

The sun is on its way down the horizon when Anna gets back into her car. She never feels like her visits with Elsa mean anything, or do anything to help her sister, but this visit was especially uncertain and tilting.

_Maybe that’s how Elsa feels all the time._

* * *

Elsa lays in bed with her headphones on. She knows Anna leaves her a new CD every Monday, but she can’t risk hearing… _her._

It’s dark now, at least in her room. The hallways are always lit in the group home-that-is-not-her-home. At first that was annoying. Now it’s comforting. A little. Sometimes. Not always.

Elsa studies the face of the woman she drew on her iPad. “Where are you?” she whispers.

Even through the up-tempo beat of the music blaring through her headphones, Elsa hears the voice. Four notes.

_Ah-ah, ah-ah._

“No,” Elsa says firmly. “Anna says you’re not real.”

_Ah-ah, ah-ah._

“What do you want? ‘Cause you’re keeping me awake.”

_Ah-ah, ah-ah._

“No. I don’t hear you. I’m sorry. I have to… not listen.”

_Ah-ah, ah-ah._

Elsa turns up the music and frowns at the woman’s face. “Anna says I can’t come find you,” she tells the picture. “And I can’t make Anna sad anymore. If I make her sad again and again she might stop loving me, and then I’ll never get to go home.”

_Ah-ah, ah-ah._

“Are you someone out there who’s a little bit like me?” Elsa asks the woman.

The voice disappears, and Elsa’s left alone with the pop songs in her ears.

She turns off the iPad, takes off her headphones, and closes her eyes.

The voice doesn’t return.

* * *

The next Monday there’s another drawing of the woman, this one printed out and sitting on Elsa’s desk when Anna comes to the group home. There’s also a page of scribbled half-sentences, words tripping over words in all different directions. Anna stares at it, turning it one way and then the other, reading what Elsa’s scrawled out.

_Sorry secret siren_

_Are you someone out there who’s a little bit like me?_

_Show yourself!!!_

At the top there’s a musical staff, four notes drawn on it. Anna doesn’t read music - she was too squirrelly to sit on a piano bench as a child, and never wanted to stay inside practicing the way Elsa did - but she knows Elsa does. The pencil marks on the page are dark and heavy, but with copious eraser marks around them, suggesting confusion.

Anna makes herself a mental note to buy Elsa musical notation paper. _Writing music has to be safer than listening to voices in her head, right?_

She takes the drawing of the woman out back to see Elsa. Elsa’s in her normal spot near the fence, but her hood is up and her forehead is physically pressed against the fence. Anna knows what this means: migraine. Elsa’s going to be even more incoherent.

“Hi,” Anna says softly as she takes Elsa’s hand in hers.

“Take me home.”

“You are home.”

“No,” Elsa says, her voice absolutely heartbroken. “No, Anna, you _know_ that’s not true. Take me _home.”_

“We can plan a visit for you to come home,” Anna offers.

“Take me home _now!”_ Elsa screams. Her head slams against the fence.

Anna, still holding Elsa’s hand in hers, physically gets between her sister and the fence. “I can’t take you home today. I can take you home in a few days. Or I can bring you something from home. Tell me what you need and I can get it. Please, just don’t hurt yourself.”

“I need to _go!”_

“Okay, you want to go out? Where do you want to go?”

Elsa tries to slam her head into Anna’s chest. Anna steps out of the way, yanking on Elsa’s hand so that Elsa misses both Anna’s body and the fence. “Stop. Where do you want to go?”

“I don’t know. Everywhere.”

“Can you be a little more specific?” Anna asks, trying to smile.

“No. We have to listen for her.”

Anna’s heart sinks. “Who, Elsa? Who are you listening to?”

Elsa points to the picture in Anna’s hand, crumpled now by the emotion of the moment.

“Elsa, this is someone you drew. She’s not real,” Anna says.

“You’re not listening,” Elsa protests. “She’s real and she’s _alone_ and she’s _scared.”_

Her head comes up and Anna sees tears in her sister’s blue eyes. “What would you do if _I_ was missing?” Elsa asks. “Would you go look for me?”

“Of course I would,” Anna replies. “But you’re real.”

_“She’s_ real.”

“What’s her name?” Anna challenges.

“Kirstin Ingman.”

That stops Anna cold. Elsa’s only ever given bizarre names to her voices; _Bruni_ is one Anna remembers the best. But Kirstin Ingman is an actual name, and what’s more, Anna _knows_ who Kirstin Ingman is. The whole town does. She’s a missing preschool teacher whose disappearance has been headline news for the past two weeks.

She holds the drawing up in front of her. Yes, this is definitely Kirsten Ingman. Anna’s not sure how she missed the significance. “You’re hearing Kirsten Ingman?”

Elsa nods.

“And you know where she is?”

Elsa nods again, watching Anna a little distrustfully, as though her sister’s going to mock her.

Anna sighs. “Let’s go talk to Olaf and see if he wants us to pick up some Chinese food while we’re out.”

* * *

**_Missing Preschool Teacher “Acting Strangely” Before Her Disappearance_ **

_by Ingrid Bjorgman_

_Kirstin Ingman has been missing now for ten days. She was last seen leaving Three Fjords Preschool, where she works as a teacher. Her coworkers obviously adore her, as does the school’s principal, Bjorn Hauptsson. “She is clever, creative, kind, and so very smart. We miss her greatly and want nothing more than her safe return.”’_

_Ingman’s mother, Inga Aaberg, says that in the days before her daughter’s disappearance, she became concerned about Kirstin’s mental state. “She was talking about hearing voices, having dreams about an ocean full of nightmares, and seeing lights in the forest behind her home. I urged her to talk to her doctor about these things but I don’t know if she did. I miss her so dearly and I want her to come home safely.”_

_Local police have no updates on Ingman’s whereabouts, although search teams of friends, family, and community members are leaving from Balstad’s Photography on Liesl Street every morning at 10 a.m._

* * *

Anna looks over at Elsa as they sit in the car in the parking lot of Sunny Pines. Elsa’s face is pale, her hands clenched into fists, her forehead sweaty. She sits in the seat as though her bones have turned to liquid.

“Elsa, we can go back inside,” Anna says softly. “You don’t have to ride in the car.”

“No, I have to go,” Elsa says, but her breathing is rapid and her eyes are darting around the car.

“You’re safe,” Anna says. “I promise, you’re safe.”

“It’s too loud.”

“Can I make it quieter?”

Elsa sticks out her hand and Anna stares down at it for a moment, stunned that Elsa seems to be requesting physical contact. She hesitates only a beat before slipping her hand into Elsa’s, meshing their fingers. “We do this together,” Anna tells her sister.

“We do this together,” Elsa repeats.

Anna turns on the car and drives down Sunny Pines’ driveway. At the street she turns to Elsa. “Which way?”

Elsa puts on her blue headphones and taps them with her fingers. “Are you there?” she whispers.

Anna watches as Elsa’s eyes slide out of focus, just a little. She sits, frozen, as Elsa tilts her head. _“I can hear you,”_ Elsa whispers, and her eyes close.

They sit there for another thirty seconds before Elsa sings out four notes - _ah-ah, ah-ah._

The tones hang in the air of Anna’s car like surprised soap bubbles. Elsa sings out the notes again - _ah-ah, ah-ah_ \- and Anna is suddenly taken back to the Elsa she used to know, the Elsa whose voice was strong and confident and bold. She misses that voice.

“Left,” Elsa says as the second set of notes dies away.

The sun starts to set as they drive in and out of the city. At every intersection Anna turns to look at Elsa, still hunched in the passenger seat, headphones tightly clenched over her ears, singing out the four notes at random intervals, waiting for a one-word direction - _left right straight._

Elsa’s directions take them on a winding circuit of the town, lights coming on in Main Street shops as they pass, and out onto the far side, on a road heading up to a campground near the Northuldra enclave.

“Are you sure, Elsa?” Anna asks as they pull into the parking lot of the campground. Gravel pings up against the body of her Honda.

Elsa hesitates, tilts her head, listens, and then nods. “We’re going to have to go on foot from here.”

“Elsa,” Anna says, a little irritated, “it’s dark out. We’ve both missed dinner. I’m not prepared to go hiking. Please, just let this go. We can go home and relax, and eat some bad Chinese food, and then I’ll take you back to the group home.”

“No,” Elsa says stubbornly. “She’s _here._ I _know_ it.”

She sings out those four notes and Anna’s too caught up in reveling about how confident Elsa sounds for the first time in forever to realize that by the time the notes fade, Elsa’s out of the car.

“Damn it, Elsa,” Anna hisses under her breath. She grabs the emergency flashlight from her glove box and jogs after her sister.

Elsa’s not fast, though; years of meds have left her slow and somewhat uncoordinated. Anna catches up easily, the flashlight beam bobbing on the gravel trail in front of them.

“Elsa, what if she’s not here?”

“She’s here.”

“How do you know?”

“How do you know you’re wearing socks today? I just know.”

Anna has to take a moment to process that, wondering for a split second if she actually _is_ wearing socks. (She is.)

“How did Kirstin Ingman start talking to you?”

“No one else was listening. Now, shhh.” Elsa stops and sings out the same four notes - _ah-ah, ah-ah._

Anna pauses, listening to the woods around them.

And then she hears it.

_Ah-ah, ah-ah._

Farther away, shakier than Elsa’s.

But definitely real.

“Holy shit,” Anna says.

Elsa laughs, and Anna sees nothing but pure joy on her face. “I told you so,” she says, and she sounds like the Elsa Anna’s been missing.

They continue down the gravel path, the trees pressing in thicker from both sides. It seems to get darker the further they go, and Anna carefully picks out where her feet end up, looking out for large rocks and twisting tree roots. Elsa seems to have no trouble making her way through, as though the four notes she’s singing are a compass and a searchlight all in one.

The trail curves sharply to the left suddenly, and Anna sees the moon for the first time in their hike, bobbing over a river several hundred feet below. She realizes they’re in Northuldra territory now. “Elsa, do you know where we are?”

“Mm-hmm. We’re almost there.”

“No, we shouldn’t be here. This is the Northuldra forest preserve.”

“And we’re almost there.” Elsa sings out her song one more time, and the responding call sounds the closest it’s been. “Just around the next bend.”

Anna sighs but keeps going, her flashlight weaving on the trail before them. “We’re going to get shot.”

“She wouldn’t let that happen to us,” Elsa informs her sagely.

And then there it is, a falling-down cabin in the back-end of nowhere, set two hundred feet off the twisting path. Elsa leaves the trail without hesitation, tromping off into the tall grass. Anna freezes, unsure of what to do.

“Elsa!”

“What?”

“We can’t do this!”

“So just stay there.”

_I used to be the adventurous one,_ Anna grumbles to herself. Her feet feel rooted to the trail, even as Elsa disappears into the darkness. She _wants_ to go after her sister, to protect her, to _we do this together,_ but she’s frozen. If she goes after Elsa and Kirstin Ingman is in the cabin, what does it prove? That Elsa’s _not_ crazy? That Elsa’s psychic? That Elsa somehow managed to kidnap a preschool teacher and stow her away in a shack in the Northuldra preserve?

Or if she goes after Elsa and _nothing_ is in the cabin, does that mean Elsa’s getting worse? No, that can’t be right - Anna heard the responding song - wait - is _she_ crazy too?

Whatever the truth is, stepping off the path means Anna’s going to have to face a brand new existence, and she knows only one thing: she’s not ready for whatever it is.

* * *

Elsa moves through the grass and rocks as though a path was lit for her. She sings out the four-note tune, softly, and hears a call.

“Hello,” she says. “I think I know who you are.”

“I’m so cold,” a voice says. It’s female. Scared. Scratchy.

“We’re going to make that better,” Elsa says. She takes off her dark blue hooded sweatshirt and bends down. There’s just enough moonlight for her to see a woman huddled against the wall of the cabin. “I’m Elsa.”

“I’m… I’m Kirstin. Are you a police officer?”

Elsa shakes her head.

“How did you find me?”

“You found me,” Elsa says with a shrug.

“What?”

“You knew the song.” Elsa holds out the sweatshirt.

Kirstin looks confused, but she takes the sweatshirt and puts it on.

“Are you ready to go home?”

Kirstin nods. “I can’t… I can’t stand up, though. My leg is broken.”

“Anna!” Elsa calls. “Come here, I need help!”

She turns back to Kirstin. “My sister’s here too. We do things together.”

Anna enters the shack and stares in shock at Kirstin Ingman, the woman’s face now familiar from Elsa’s drawings, the news, and the local papers. “You… how did you…?” she breathes at Elsa.

Elsa, trying to help the woman off the ground, says, “All I needed was for you to believe me.”

Anna hurries forward and helps Kirstin to stand. “I’m sorry,” she says.

“So, are you guys like, rescuers?” Kirstin asks as they help her hobble towards the door. "Professionals?"

“Oh! No, no, nothing like that,” Anna tells her. “I’m an interior designer and Elsa’s schizophrenic.”

She regrets the words as they come out of her mouth and remains firmly glad that it’s too dark for Kirstin Ingman to see her face. She’s also glad she can’t see Kirstin’s face, either, since “confused” is probably the kindest word to describe her feelings on her rescuers.

* * *

There are cops and an ambulance waiting in the parking lot of the campground when the sisters, still holding Kirstin between them, stumble out of the woods.

“Shit,” Anna says, freezing.

“What?” Kirstin asks.

Anna can already feel Kirstin leaning more heavily on her, as though Elsa’s no longer on her right side. “Elsa, stay with me,” Anna demands. “It’s okay. They’re not here for you. They’re here to make sure Kirstin is safe.”

She has no fucking clue _what_ the cops are doing at the campground, but she knows that’s not going to matter to her sister.

“Elsa, talk to me,” Anna pleads. “You’re okay!”

A cop is hurrying towards them. “Stop right there!”

Elsa screams and Anna sees her slap her own head.

_“Fuck,”_ Anna hisses. She takes four big steps towards the cop, a tall man with shaggy hair, practically carrying Kirstin on her hip. “Hey, hi, I’m Anna Aren-Dell and this is the woman you’ve been looking for, Kirstin Ingman. Kirstin, say hi.”

“Um, hi?”

“I need you guys to back off,” Anna says, the words tumbling out in a rush.

“Huh?” the cop says, and Anna can’t blame him.

“My sister’s terrified of cops, and she’s a runner sometimes, and I can’t lose her out here, it’s dark and I have no idea where I am,” Anna goes on hurriedly. Elsa’s still screaming.

“What’s going on, ma’am?” the cop asks.

“I wish I could tell you,” Anna says. “For now, _please_ just take Ms. Ingman and _back off.”_

The cop looks at her. “Okay, but this isn’t over. I'll have questions for you at some point.”

He leans forward and scoops Kirstin off the ground. “Sorry for meeting you like this, Ms. Ingman. We’ll have some paramedics take a look at you.”

“Thank you,” Kirstin says gratefully. “It’s been a very strange evening.”

“I bet,” the cop says, giving Anna a sideways glance.

* * *

Anna turns and runs back down the gravel path. Abruptly she halts - the screaming has stopped.

“Elsa?” Anna asks hesitantly.

“Who are you?” a voice calls out of the darkness.

“I’m Anna. I’m looking for my sister.” Anna raises the flashlight up just a bit, enough to see two women standing near Elsa. Elsa’s sobbing into the shoulder of one of them, the older one. The younger one has a staff pointed towards Anna.

“This is your sister?” the older woman asks. “She is sick. Why is she out here alone?”

“She’s not alone, we were out here looking for someone who was missing and - wait, how do you know she’s sick?”

“I see it just by looking at her,” the older woman replies. She brings one hand up and gently rubs Elsa’s back.

Anna looks back and forth between the women. “You’re Northuldra,” she guesses.

“Yes,” the younger woman says. “And you’re not.”

“No, and I’m sorry that we’re out here, but we found who we were looking for and I can take her home now,” Anna says.

“Do you want to go home?” the older woman asks Elsa softly.

“Not the home she’ll take me to,” Elsa sobs.

“What is she talking about?” The older woman raises her head and looks at Anna.

“She… she lives at Sunny Pines. It’s a group home,” Anna says, a bit lamely.

The two women exchange glances.

“My brother works there,” the younger woman says after a few beats.

“It’s a good, safe, place,” the older woman says to Elsa. “It might not be the home you’re used to, but I bet there’s some things you like about it.”

“I don’t want them to take me away,” Elsa whimpers.

“No one’s going to take you anywhere,” the older woman says gently. “Now, tell me what you like about it. There has to be something.”

“Olaf is nice,” Elsa snuffles. “And my room. My sister did a good job on it.”

“What else?”

Anna notices that the older woman is carefully walking Elsa forward, back towards the parking lot.

“We have pancakes on Saturday mornings,” Elsa says. “And there’s a piano, and I play music and sing sometimes.”

Anna realizes she had no idea about that, and she feels terrible.

“Sounds like you’re very talented,” the older woman says. They’re nearly back at the parking lot; Anna breathes a sigh of relief when she sees that the cop cars and the ambulance are gone. “Maybe Maren and I will come and visit you when Ryder’s working, and you could play a song for us.”

“I’d like that,” the younger woman - Maren - answers.

“I’m not… I’m not supposed to be here, not like this,” Elsa says. She stops and turns to look at the older woman.

“I know,” the older woman says softly. “I see it in your eyes. I think you have a lot of stories to tell, bright one, hmm?”

To Anna, the older woman says, “Do you need anything else?”

Anna shakes her head, stunned at what’s just occurred.

“Then we’ll take our leave.” The older woman reaches into her jacket pocket and pulls out a business card, which she hands to Anna. She kisses Elsa gently on the forehead.

And then, just as quietly and quickly as they’d appeared, the two Northuldra disappear back into the forest.

Anna looks down at the business card. _Yelana Tollefsrud,_ it reads. _Northuldra Preserve Security._

With her sister clinging to her in the parking lot of a campground, the night wide and mysterious around them, Anna knows the bottom’s dropped out of her peaceful, calm - if somewhat occasionally eccentric - existence. A whole unknown has just opened up, and it’s like walking into mist: she has no idea where she’s going.


	2. Chapter 2

[ ](https://ibb.co/6PRVRQ8)

When they get back to the group home it’s almost ten o’clock and Elsa’s asleep against the window. Anna knows she should get out of the car, go get someone from the home to help her get Elsa back inside, but she’s both weirdly exhausted and too amped to move.

What had just happened? How had Elsa known where Kirstin Ingman was? How long had Elsa been trying to tell her things that were true, or at least mostly true, and how long had Anna been ignoring them? What else didn’t Anna know about Elsa’s life?

And that cop - he said he’d have questions for her. What could she possibly say that didn’t sound absolutely insane?

There’s a tap at the window and Anna jumps. She whips her head around to see Olaf standing there.

“You get my noodles?” he asks when Anna opens the door.

“No, but we did find a missing person.”

“What about my missing noodles?”

“Olaf. We found Kirstin Ingman.”

Olaf stares at her. “Pardon?”

“Remember that voice I told you Elsa was hearing, the one I didn’t believe her about, and the one that you suggested might be real?” Anna bites her lip. “Turns out you were right.”

“Wow, that was hard for you to say!” Olaf laughs.

“Olaf, how in the hell did she know Kirstin Ingman was up in a shack on the Northuldra preserve?” Anna demands, getting out of the car. She shuts the door behind her. “How in the _fuck_ did she know that?”

Olaf shrugs. “World’s a big place, Anna.”

“Exactly! How, out of all the places Elsa knows, did she know to go _there?”_

“It does sure raise a lot of questions.”

“Yeah! A _ton!_ Some of which the _cops_ are going to ask me later!”

“Ooh, you could finally meet yourself a handsome law enforcement officer,” Olaf says, pretending to swoon. “I’m sure you can clear everything up and it’ll all make sense in the morning.”

“Olaf - my schizophrenic sister, who occasionally picks up a hot pan off the oven with her bare hands because she’s listening too hard to what’s in her head, just found a missing woman in a restricted nature preserve, and she did so by _singing.”_

“That doesn’t surprise me. Elsa has a beautiful voice. Nice vibrato.”

_“Olaf.”_

“Anna,” Olaf replies, a grin on his face, “I don’t know what to tell you. The world is full of miracles. Isn’t it possible Elsa’s one of them?”

Anna looks over at her sister, sleeping in the passenger seat of the car. Elsa’s face is relaxed, her brow smooth, one hand loosely curled around the end of her braid.

“Of _course_ she’s a miracle,” Anna says softly. “The fact that she’s even still alive is a miracle. But this… this is something I can’t understand.”

“Sometimes the world’s wonderful that way,” Olaf answers. “Sometimes it’s harsh and terrible and full of nightmares and sadness… and then it gives us things like hugs and summer as though to prove it’s all worth it.”

He looks around Anna, his eyes focusing on Elsa’s sleeping form. “I’ll have one of the guys come get her. Seems like a shame to wake her up.”

“Olaf,” Anna says slowly, “can I… stay? Tonight? I’ll be up before she is, she’ll never know.”

Olaf considers this. He told Anna once, some time ago, that while family members are always welcome to _visit_ Sunny Pines, they generally aren’t allowed to stay overnight. Something about the group home needing to remain a singular place, not a bridge between one home and another home, delegitimizing the group home’s importance in a resident’s life, leading the resident to feel abandoned and untethered when their family member leaves. But Olaf likes the Aren-Dell sisters, and he’s broken that particular rule for them more than once. (Anna knows he’s broken it for other families, too.) Thanks to him, she’s gotten to spend some of Elsa’s worst nights _with_ her sister, rather than nervously worrying at home about whether or not the next time she saw Elsa would be in ICU, unconscious.

“Just for tonight,” Olaf relents.

Anna throws her arms around him and kisses him on his cheek. “Thank you.”

Olaf gets Halvard, one of the bigger techs, to come out and get Elsa out of the car. Elsa looks tiny in his arms, but she doesn’t wake when he lays her in her bed.

“Sleep well,” Halvard says with a wink and a smile.

“Thanks,” Anna says, and smiles at him.

She slips out of her shoes and her jacket, setting those on Elsa’s desk chair. She undoes the half-ponytail from her hair and runs her fingers through her reddish-brown locks, knowing her hair will be an absolute mess in the morning.

When she settles into bed next to Elsa all she knows is peace. Her sister is warm and so very present, her breaths soft on Anna’s skin. This is how things used to be, before things weren’t.

Anna curls up towards her sister, her eyes closing as she relaxes.

* * *

_The world is full of miracles._

Elsa dreams, but not like normal. Her dreams are staticky like an old TV screen, going in and out of focus. She sees her mother, feels her mother stroking her head, hears her mother’s voice. She sees her father, feels her father swinging her around and around and around, hears her father’s laugh.

She sees Anna.

She sees pills strewn across a tile floor.

She hears the voice. _Ah-ah, ah-ah._

Her head hurts. She whimpers.

The static flashes. It’s brighter. It’s louder.

She sees her hands on the piano keys, hears her voice, sees the notes materialize into the air around her, dancing towards a staff, placing themselves perfectly.

_I can hear you, but I won’t. Some look for trouble, while others don’t._

She hears the voice - _that_ voice - “Are you someone who looks for trouble, Elsa? It seems like you’re in a lot of it lately.”

_I’m sorry secret siren but I’m blocking out your calls._

“Elsa, if you can’t tell me what you were doing there I’m afraid we’ll have to take you back to lockup.”

She hears screaming. It’s hers. Screaming, screaming, until her throat is raw. Her fingernails gone somehow. Screaming for Anna. The floor falling away, a deep black pit of nothingness opening up beneath her.

The static burns, wraps around her wrists, yanks them apart, threatens to rip her body apart.

She screams - but she doesn’t have a voice.

_Where are you going - don’t leave me alone?!_

And she’s awake, back into her tortured, too bright, too loud world, with a name seared through her mind: _Emilia Haagenstadt._

* * *

Anna jerks awake. Elsa’s on the floor, hunched over, retching.

“Elsa!” Anna rolls out of bed. She runs over to the doorway of the room and hits the “assistance” button next to the light switch before kneeling down next to Elsa. She puts her hand on Elsa’s back and rubs.

Elsa moans and vomits.

“Easy,” Anna whispers. “It’s okay.”

Elsa brings one hand up to her eye and pushes in. Her movements are jerky, her breathing rapid, her body shaking. She coughs and retches again. “No,” she moans. “No.”

“I’m right here,” Anna tells her softly.

Elsa hunches over again, her white-blond hair falling across her face in a wave. Anna takes Elsa’s hand and squeezes. Her sister’s fingers are freezing. Elsa hiccups and vomits once more, the moaning growing louder.

“Take it from me,” Elsa pleads. Her fingers reach up and twine themselves in her hair, yanking fiercely.

“No,” Anna says, her voice firm but kind. “Please don’t hurt yourself.”

Footsteps in the hallway grow closer and the door opens. Gerda, one of the house mothers, moves in carefully. “How can I help, Anna?”

Anna holds one hand up, cautioning Gerda to not come any closer. “Elsa, can you talk to me?”

“I can’t be here like this,” Elsa moans. She curls herself into a ball and retches again. “It’s too heavy.”

“What’s too heavy?”

_“All_ of it.”

“So put it down,” Anna suggests. She gently pulls Elsa’s hair back from her face; she takes a hair tie from around her wrist and pulls back Elsa’s long tresses into a thick ponytail.

Elsa turns her head towards her sister. Her blue eyes are a little clouded, a little blank. “I need to write it down.”

“Can it wait until the morning? I think you need to be cleaned up a little, and maybe have some medicine,” Anna says.

“Something is wrong,” Elsa says. She presses her hands to her head. “It’s so loud, Anna.”

“I know,” Anna says, and pulls Elsa up against her. “I know. Let’s take a shower, put some new pajamas on, and we can try to figure it out.”

Elsa rests her head on Anna’s shoulder.

Anna looks up at Gerda. “If you’ll help me, we can get her cleaned up.”

Gerda nods. “I’ll turn the shower on and come back for you. I’ll send Inga to clean up in here.”

She leaves, and Anna looks down at Elsa, breathing shallowly against her. “Elsa, how do you feel? Are you going to be sick again?”

“No.”

“Does your head hurt?”

“No.” It’s a soft moan.

“Do you feel… do you feel the way you feel before you have a seizure?”

“Nnn.” Elsa’s getting heavier against her.

“Hey, stay with me,” Anna says. “Stay awake enough to get cleaned up, okay? You don’t want to go back to bed in gross pajamas, right?”

“Nnn.”

Gerda returns and lifts Elsa’s limp body off Anna. Anna stands up and takes some of Elsa’s weight, and between the two of them, they manage to get Elsa down the hallway and into the group home’s shower room. It’s warm, the water already running, and Gerda’s placed a shower chair underneath the spray. Nearby Anna sees Elsa’s toiletry bucket and a few towels.

“I’ll take care of her,” Gerda promises as they lower Elsa onto the shower chair.

“I can help,” Anna offers.

“Go get her some new pajamas, huh?” Gerda says, already trying to prop Elsa up enough to get her shirt off. “Miss Elsa, open your eyes for me, yeah? Give me a little help.”

Anna hesitates.

“We’re fine,” Gerda tells her. “We’ll be right here when you get back.”

It takes Anna a few minutes to return with the pajamas. She’s disoriented - it’s still dark outside, 3 a.m. when she takes the chance to check the clock - and very tired. She takes her time picking out one set of Elsa’s pajamas, though they’re all identical, and exchanges a few words with Inga, who’s cleaned up the floor and is in the process of putting new sheets and blankets on the bed.

Olaf meets her in the hallway outside the shower room.

“Do you ever go home?” Anna asks him.

“You do know that I live here, right?” He grins at her.

“How are you so cheerful at 3 a.m.?”

“Comes with the job. If someone’s upset, they need to see a smiling face, not a grumpy goofus.”

Anna has to smile at that. “Thanks for being a not-grumpy-goofus.”

“I do my best. What happened to our girl?”

“I don’t know. I woke up and she was on the floor vomiting.”

“She hasn’t done that much before,” Olaf says, furrowing his brow.

Anna shakes her head. “No, it’s completely unlike her.”

He rubs his forehead. “I’ve got her meds. What do you think she needs?”

“Does she have a PRN anti-emetic?”

“Fancy words for an interior decorator, Ms. Aren-Dell.”

“I’m an interior _designer,”_ Anna says. “Just give her something to settle her stomach and sedate her. We can figure it all out in the morning.”

_“We_ will figure it out in the morning, but not you,” Olaf tells her. “You’re going home.”

“Olaf.”

“You need some sleep to function like a human, and you’re not going to get it here if Elsa’s sick,” Olaf says. “Give me those pajamas and get out of here. You’ve presumably got a date with some sort of law enforcement official at some point in the very near future, and I want you to look your best.”

_“You_ want me?”

“You need a man, Anna,” Olaf says seriously.

“What?”

“You’re in a group home at 3 a.m. in the clothes you wore yesterday,” Olaf says. “You deserve to be at home, snuggled up with someone who loves you.”

“My home’s wherever Elsa is,” Anna tells him softly. “So until she woke me up, I was.”

She hands him the pajamas and goes back down the hall to get her shoes and jacket.

Olaf’s not in the hallway when she comes back; she can hear him talking to Gerda in the shower room.

When she goes out into the dark, still morning, the stars overhead are so bright that they almost hurt and the world is too silent. All Anna can hear is Elsa’s voice: _Take it from me._

Anna starts her car and drives away from Sunny Pines.

* * *

Elsa’s blurry. She’s on a ship. She can’t stand. Water’s flowing over her body, streaming through her hair, splashing down around her ankles and feet.

She hears voices around her that she knows, but they’re not speaking any language she understands. Words flow out of their mouths like dark clouds, hanging around their heads. She reaches up and tries to touch the clouds, but they’re cold and firm and they hurt her fingers. She wonders what her words would look like if she tried to speak.

Her stomach’s roiling. She leans forward and tries to vomit up the cold, gluey sensation in her stomach. Hands hold her shoulders - gently, carefully, like she’s fine china - and she heaves and retches. Water drips down her face.

The light’s getting fuzzy around her and there’s a sharp whine in the back of her head. Elsa leans forward and vomits again. She can’t right her body, she’s too weak to pick herself back up, as though all of her strength is flowing down through the shower drain with the water. She cries out - _Take it from me!_

Her words are blue-and-white blobs in the air, floating bubbles trailing from her mouth. Elsa watches her words drift towards the ceiling, sucked up into the bathroom fan. As each one pops a small shock zaps into her spine.

Someone’s holding her up now; the water’s gone. Elsa leans into whoever it is; they’re soft and comforting and she wants to close her eyes and rest against them until the whine and the noise are gone.

The lights are soft, haloes around each one. Elsa knows what that means - she’s not _too_ far gone from her body - and she tries to reach up and grab whoever’s holding her. _Seizure,_ she tries to say, two little bubbles.

There’s more movement, she’s being carried back down the hallway to her room, wrapped up in the warm comfort. The colors of the world are sliding down the walls, the lights softening further as though dissipating watercolor in a cup of water.

_Ah-ah, ah-ah,_ the voice sings to her gently, a lullaby, a welcoming drowning.

Elsa seizes, and everything else is irrelevant.

* * *

Anna wakes at six-thirty to find a text message from Olaf, sent at 5 a.m.: _She seized for 2 min. about 30 min. after you left. She’s resting peacefully now. Call you later._

She sits at the edge of her bed for a long time, her head in her hands, sobbing.

* * *

It hadn’t always been just the two of them. Their parents, Iduna Aren and Agnarr Dell, both loved living in Three Fjords; they’d spent their entire married life in the small town. The Aren-Dells knew everyone, they were involved in all of the community festivals and events, they were generous to local charities. Iduna was the head librarian at Three Fjords’ Library; Agnarr was a lawyer at the firm of Aren-Dell, Urdahl, Gjerde, and Flom. They’d raised Anna and Elsa to love their hometown, and it was certainly never a secret how much Iduna and Agnarr loved the town.

In return, Three Fjords loved Iduna and Agnarr. They were even voted Town King and Queen one year at the New Year’s Festival, which led many citizens to call Anna and Elsa, jokingly, “the princesses” for a few years after that.

Anna remembers nothing but a happy childhood and a happy young-adulthood, which ended abruptly the day her parents were killed. It was a clear, crisp spring day, the smell of apple trees in the air. The news came up to Oaken’s in a phone call from Leif Flom, one of her father’s law partners.

_There was an accident,_ he said. _I’m so sorry._

Elsa was home from university and very clearly ill. She’d been living in an apartment with Anna, but things were getting harder and harder every day. After Iduna and Agnarr died, Elsa lost touch with much of reality, and a month after their funerals attempted suicide for the first time.

Anna found Sunny Pines before her sister was released from the hospital. It felt like she was losing everything at once - her parents were gone, never to return, and her sister was locked inside her own mind, hearing and seeing things Anna could not.

She was alone, and she had no idea where to turn.

* * *

Now she stares down at her text messages. She runs her hands through her tangled hair and tosses her phone onto her bed.

Then she picks it back up and goes down to the front door, where she tossed her coat over the little table next to the door. She digs around in her coat pocket, looking for the card from Yelana. Half of her expects not to find it, that last night’s journey had been nothing more than a bizarre dream of some sort, but then her fingers close around it.

Anna dials with her heart pounding in her chest. She has no idea what to say.

“Hello?”

She can’t speak.

“Hello?” It’s clearly Yelana’s voice, getting sterner as the silence on the other end extends itself out like a snake.

“I need your help,” Anna blurts out.

“Do you?” The voice sounds slightly amused.

“My name is…”

“I know who you are,” Yelana says. “I thought I wouldn’t hear from you again.”

“Last night, in the forest, it seemed like you almost… _knew_ my sister. But I can’t remember meeting you.”

“The world’s a big place,” Yelana says. “We can’t all be strangers from each other.”

Anna leans forward, putting her head against the wall. “Can you help Elsa?”

“I thought it was you who was asking for help.”

“If you can help her… it would help me.”

“Hmm,” Yelana says.

“She’s getting worse.”

“What happened last night?” Yelana asks.

“Don’t you know?”

“I know that both of you ended up out there. I know that you found someone in our preserve. I don’t know anything else.”

“It was Kirstin Ingman. My sister found Kirstin Ingman.”  
  
“The missing teacher.”

“Yes.”

“How did she know where to look?”

“I don’t know,” Anna sighs. “She told me she was hearing someone, and I told her it wasn’t happening because the odds were good it _wasn’t,_ and then she refused to let it go.”

She closes her eyes. “She was going to hurt herself, so I asked her what she needed. She said she needed to go somewhere. I took her. She found Kirstin.”

Yelana is quiet.

“When we got back I stayed with her, and she woke up sick. I got a message this morning that she got sicker after I left. I don’t know what’s happening to her. I don’t know how to help her, if she’s really hearing missing people. And I don’t know what to tell the cops who are doubtlessly going to come ask me questions this morning.”

“Would you bring her to me?”

Anna brings her head up. “What?”

“Would you bring her out to the preserve? To spend time with me and Maren and the others?”

“I don’t know you,” Anna says.

“Yet you felt comfortable enough to call me after we spoke for mere minutes last night.”

“You felt comfortable enough with _me_ to give me your card,” Anna retorts.

“What’s the worst that could happen?” Yelana counters.

“She gets upset, runs away, falls down a cliff or ends up somewhere she’s not supposed to be, you have to call the cops, they put her back in the hospital and she tries to kill herself again, or -”

“Anna,” Yelana says firmly, cutting off the runaway thoughts. “I swear to you that I would not call the cops on Elsa. Ever. And no one else here would either. We wouldn’t leave her alone. She would be safe here.”

Anna’s head hurts. “What do you want to do with her out there?”

“I’d let her decide.”

There’s a knock at the door.

“I have to go,” Anna says. “Um, but I… I’ll see what she wants to do.”

“I look forward to your call,” Yelana says, and she sounds sincere.

Anna hangs up and opens the apartment door.

The broad-shouldered, shaggy-haired policeman from the night before is standing on her doorstep. “Are you Anna Aren-Dell?”

“It’s a little bit early for an interrogation,” Anna says.

“Then it’s good I’m not here for one of those.” He shows her his badge. “I’m Officer Kristoff Bjorgman, and I’d like to ask you a few questions about what happened last night. The whole town is grateful that you were able to rescue Kirstin.”

“The whole town’s not awake yet,” Anna says, crossing her arms. “And I’m busy.”

Officer Bjorgman puts a resolute smile on his face. “We can either do this now, or down at the station. And I can ask your sister to come with you.”

Anna freezes. “Why would you do that?”

“I’m just trying to point out that there’s an easy way to do this, and a difficult way.”

“You have _no_ right to bring Elsa into this!” Anna spits at him.

“Technically, Ms. Aren-Dell, I do. She was the one who found Ms. Ingman. My superiors are actually very interested in how that happened. So either you play nice with me, or we can order Elsa into the station.”

“Why the _fuck_ would you do that to her?” Anna demands. “I’m sure you’ve read her file - you’re not a big force and there’s not a lot of crime around here, so I’m sure there’s lots of time to read up on Three Fjords’ weirdos, so you _know_ that would hurt her. Is that really how the Three Fjords police department wants to portray itself? Hurting mentally ill citizens?”

“So you’ll be cooperating with me?”

Anna just stares at him. She thinks of Elsa on the floor of her room at the group home, shaking and crying and vomiting. She can’t hurt Elsa any more than Elsa already hurts, but she’ll be damned if she lets the _cops_ do it in her place.

“Won’t you come in, Officer Bjorgman?” she asks through gritted teeth.

“Thank you, citizen,” the cop says, tipping his hat as he steps into the apartment.

* * *

Anna stands across the kitchen as the officer sits down at the table, taking his hat and jacket off before pulling out some paperwork on a clipboard.

“Please state your name,” he says.

“You know my name.”

“Please state your name,” Officer Bjorgman repeats.

Anna bites her tongue. “Anna Kristianna Aren-Dell.”

She spells her last name for him.

“Please give your address.”

“You know where we are.”

“Will you be fighting me on every question?” he asks, looking up at her.

“I live at Number Nine Glass Street, Apartment 4,” Anna says. She crosses her arms.

“Where were you last night?”

“I was a lot of places.”

“Where were you between the hours of five and ten o’clock last night?”

“That’s a long period of time. I was a lot of places.”

Officer Bjorgman rubs his forehead. “Ms. Aren-Dell, I know that you may not believe me, but I’m trying to help you here. Please cooperate with me, and this will be much easier.”

“I was at Sunny Pines group home, out on Oak Leaf Highway. Then I was driving around town. Then I was at Two Tents Campground off Highway Five. Then I was walking through the Northuldra forest preserve. Then I was back at Sunny Pines.”

Officer Bjorgman nods, writing this down. “Were you accompanied by anyone?”

“Yes. My sister, Elsa, was with me.” Anna looks out the window. The sun is coming up. “And at one point, Kirstin Ingman was also with us.”

“When did you find Kirstin Ingman?”

“I didn’t find her.”

“Anna -”

“It’s true,” Anna says. “Elsa was the one who found her.”

“At approximately what time did you first see Ms. Ingman?”

“I don’t know, like eight forty-five? It was dark and I don’t wear a watch.”

“How did you know that Ms. Ingman would be in the Northuldra preserve?”

“I didn’t.”

“Why were you in the preserve, if you did not know Ms. Ingman was there?”

“I was taking my sister for a walk.”

“What happened after you discovered Ms. Ingman?”

“I walked with her out of the preserve and back to the parking lot of the campground, which was when you found her.”

“What happened after that?”

“I took Elsa and we went home. To her home. To Sunny Pines.”

The officer finishes writing that down and looks up at Anna. “That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“Nothing else occurred?”

“No.”

Officer Bjorgman tilts his head.

“If that’s all, I need to get ready for work,” Anna says.

“I think that’s all my questions for now,” he replies. “I’ll let you know if I need to speak with Elsa.”

“You don’t,” Anna says. “I just told you what happened.”

“You told me what _you_ experienced. But as you said, you weren’t the one to discover Ms. Ingman, nor did you have any idea why you were out there. To me, that’s a little suspicious.”

“Do you really think that a ninety-five-pound schizophrenic somehow overpowered a taller, heavier woman, kidnapped her, and hid her in a shack in the Northuldra preserve? All without seemingly leaving the group home where she lives?”

“Anything’s possible,” Officer Bjorgman answers. “You know, I’m very grateful that Ms. Ingman was brought home. My superiors are finishing up that case. My involvement is a little different.”

He stands up, putting his pencil in his pocket and donning his jacket.

“Oh, what’s that?” Anna asks, trying hard to keep the sarcasm from her voice.

“Well, your sister found one missing person,” Officer Bjorgman answers. “I want to see if she can do it again.”

* * *

Elsa’s body isn’t working. It’s too hot. It’s too heavy. Something keeps happening with her stomach. People are around her, putting cold things on her forehead, fingers on her pulse, bringing things to her mouth. Their movements make blurry trails in the air behind them like streaks of ink in water.

_Got to get her fever down_

_She’ll seize again if we don’t_

_Popsicle for you_

Elsa grabs onto the closest person. “Call Anna,” she says. Her mouth is hot.

“We’ll call her,” the person says, but their voice sounds very far away. “Can you try to drink for us, Elsa?”

“I have to go,” Elsa says, and she tries to stand up. Her too-hot-too-heavy body sways, the room tilts, and there’s a sudden shout before two people catch her and gently lower her back to her bed.

“Stay right here,” the person says. “You have to stay here.”

“No,” Elsa protests. “She’s… she’s out there. I’m not…”

Her stomach flips and she vomits. She yanks at her hair and screams.

“Elsa, deep breath.” That voice resolves itself into Olaf’s. He’s standing in front of her with a cool washcloth, and he wipes her mouth. “I know you’re doing your best.”

_How does he know to say that?_ Elsa wonders.

“We’re worried about you,” Olaf goes on. “You’re very sick. We need you to rest.”

“If I rest… she disappears.”

“If you rest, you’ll feel better,” Olaf says. He presses a cool cloth to her forehead.

“Then you take it,” Elsa says faintly. She’s getting heavy again, and the lights are growing haloes.

“Hey, stay with me,” Olaf says. “Lay down.”

“You take it,” Elsa demands of him, trying to grab onto him.

Olaf opens his mouth to reply, but all that comes out are Elsa’s four notes:

_Ah-ah, ah-ah._

She stares at him.

_Ah-ah, ah-ah._

And she passes out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find me on Tumblr as memorysdaughter.


	3. Chapter 3

Anna keeps her head down, pencil pressed against the graph paper in front of her. She’s designing a new living room for Lennart and Lisbeth Froiland, an eccentric couple who live on a large estate in the hills above Three Fjords. While they made much of their money working as exotic animal trainers, their taste in home furnishings, weirdly, runs to the Southwest - more tan and turquoise than cheetah-print couches and taxidermied heads. Anna likes the Froilands, and before all this “finding a missing woman” nonsense, she was having a fantastic time sourcing art pieces. Now it’s all she can do to work out the new length and width of the room with the inclusion of French doors and a long wall of windows.

Half of her attention is on her phone, to be fair. She’s waiting for Olaf’s call. Or a call from the ruggedly insistent Officer Bjorgman. Or Yelena. Or… it could literally be anything now.

“Yoo-hoo!”

There’s a quick rap on her office door, and Anna’s boss, Oaken, sticks his head in. “Yoo-hoo, Anna - we are going down to Little Cakes for lunch. Will you be joining us, yes?”

“I’m sorry, Oaken, I’ve got to finish up the Froilands’ new space,” Anna says apologetically. “But if I give you some money, could you bring me back one of the square cake samplers?”

“Of course!”

Anna digs in her purse and comes out with ten dollars, which she passes over to Oaken. She knows Elsa loves Little Cakes, and to be fair, Anna does too. It’ll be the perfect thing to smooth over their evening visit, if Elsa isn’t too out of it.

“Okay, I will bring this to you!” Oaken sings out. “Do not work too hard, yes?”

“I promise I won’t,” Anna says, smiling. Oaken is always full of joy, like so many people Anna knows. But he’s multilayered, just like everyone else. He revealed to Anna one afternoon that his brother had struggled with mental illness. There hadn’t been much to his statement, just simple acceptance of a fact, but Oaken added that he lit a candle for Elsa at his mountain shrine and that was enough for Anna to burst into tears.

Oaken leaves, and Anna lets the quiet of the office urge her into getting some serious work done. She finishes up the new measurements of the space and begins going through the swatches for the drapery. One of her favorite parts of the job is all of the sensory input - the feeling of satin, of velvet, of tile, of stone, of wood and metal and ceramic. She loves the little dark shops where she finds antiques and the big open flea markets she visits for tapestries and carpets. She likes the physical work of helping to sledgehammer a wall, and the more complex work of assisting with re-circuiting a home’s electricity. She likes knowing how to do so many things, and being confident in all of them.

Her phone buzzes, and she picks it up.

_ Elsa asking for you. _

Anna sighs.  _ I’m at work. Tell her I’ll be there at five-thirty. _

_ OK. _

Oaken returns with some of Anna’s other coworkers after a bit, and brings her a small box of cake samples - tiny squares with intricate decorations, good enough for one bite. Anna looks up at him and smiles. “Thank you so much. These are beautiful!”

“I asked for only the prettiest ones, yes, and all of the lemon buttercream,” Oaken says. He hands her the ten dollars.

“Oh, no, that was to pay for the cake,” Anna says.

“It is my treat,” Oaken says, and waves the money away when she tries to hand it back. “Make Elsa smile, yes?”

“I hope so,” Anna replies. “Thank you.”

Oaken smiles at her, but Anna senses he didn’t do this for praise. Like most people in Anna’s life, he knows how important her relationship with Elsa is. He’s been more than forgiving with her continual needs to take time off, leave early, come in late, or otherwise adjust her schedule to whatever’s happening in Elsa’s life. And no matter what Anna designs for her clients, no matter if it’s attractive or not, Oaken will always point out something good about it.

(He once told her, though,  _ very _ gently, that a leopard-print floor pattern and zebra-print wallpaper would probably  _ not _ be good together… but that it was her design. But he just wanted to say. But it was her choice. But no.)

Anna lets Oaken go back to his work, and she tries desperately to go back to hers.

* * *

Officer Kristoff Bjorgman stares at the repurposed chalkboard in front of him. It’s been six months since he was assigned to the Missing Persons beat of the Three Fjords police department, and until the mysterious reappearance of Kirstin Ingman, it’s all been a lot of work for very few results.

For some odd reason, Three Fjords and its surrounding communities - Southern Isles, Weaselton, Corona, and Avalor - have a bizarrely high number of missing persons. Well, not missing  _ persons _ \- missing  _ women. _ Kristoff doesn’t know why, but he does know that he wants to solve these disappearances, bring the women back to their loved ones, and figure out how to stop more of them from going missing.

But until Elsa Aren-Dell found one, his success rate was zero.

Now he looks at his board with fresh eyes. There are four photographs up there, four women he thinks Elsa can find. He repeats their names and details to himself.

_ Emilia Haagenstadt. 26. Disappeared from the bakery where she worked. _

_ Berit Nilsen. 31. Never showed up to her daughter’s dance recital. _

_ Malin Dahl. 21. No one has seen her since she left her girlfriend’s house one night. _

_ Alison del Mar. 25. Reported missing by her coworkers at the DMV. _

He doesn’t know what inspired these four choices any more than he understands how Elsa found Kirstin, but he does know that he’s way too excited about watching Elsa try again.

Kristoff knows his superiors don’t believe in “psychics,” and that most of them think he’s a little nutty for even considering what happened in the Ingman case anything more than a “coincidence.” The police in Three Fjords have dealt with Elsa previously - there’s a whole file on her - and Kristoff’s pretty sure they don’t think she’s capable of much. He’s holding his breath until they tell him to leave her alone, but until then, she could help him solve these cases and bring the women home.

He sits back down at his desk and takes out the file on Elsa Aren-Dell. Her photo is attached to the inside of the folder, showing a haunted-looking, almost feral young woman, looking not  _ at _ the camera but off somewhere to the right. Taken when Elsa was arrested for breaking and entering, it shows a far too thin, confused, deeply disconnected individual. Kristoff’s heart hurts just looking at the photo. He tries not to think too much about what it must be like to be in Elsa’s head.

Kristoff looks over at the clock on the wall. It’s just past two in the afternoon. He wonders what kind of a schedule a schizophrenic young woman keeps, and if said young woman would appreciate an afternoon visitor.

He decides it’s time to find out.

* * *

Elsa sits on the back patio of the group home, staring out over the fence. She’s too weak to stand in her favorite spot; her head feels as though it’s full of bees and weight. She wants Anna to come and be with her, but she knows it’s not the right time of day for that.

Over all of it she can hear the song again.  _ Ah-ah, ah-ah. _ It’s leading her somewhere else, somewhere new.

She hears footsteps coming up behind her. “Are you here to take me to her?” Elsa asks without turning around.

Part of her knows it’s not Anna answering her, but the song in her head is overwhelming. “Who?” the voice asks.

“Take me to… to Emilia,” Elsa says.

“You know where Emilia is?”

Elsa nods, her eyes still focused on the woods over the fence.

“Do you want to take me to her, Elsa?”

She nods again, twisting her fingers in the sleeves of her sweatshirt.

“Okay.” The voice is gentle and understanding. “What do we need to make that happen?”

“Headphones,” Elsa says. The song is getting louder. “My headphones.”

“Okay. Where are they?”

“You know where they are.”

_ Ah-ah, ah-ah. _

“I’ll go… look for them.”

The footsteps retreat and Elsa tries to get to her feet. She wobbles a bit, using the chair to hold her up, but eventually she’s upright. The song’s streaming through her; it’s dripping down her arms and legs, sluicing from her fingertips.

She gets to the back door of the group home and hears Olaf’s voice. “She was very sick last night, Officer Bjorgman, so I don’t think taking her out of here is in her best interest. I understand your cases are time-sensitive, so -”

“I have to go,” Elsa interrupts him. The person next to Olaf solidifies, sort of, into a tall man with scruffy hair, and though she  _ knows _ he’s a police officer she also knows this one’s going to be okay.

“Elsa,” Olaf says patiently, “I don’t think that’s a very good idea.”

“I’ll come back. It’s not like there’s anywhere else I can go.”

Elsa turns towards the semi-solidified man next to Olaf. He holds out her headphones and she smiles, slipping them over her ears. Immediately the song builds in her ears, rolling down through her body like a hug.

“What if I go with her?” One of the techs approaches Olaf.

Olaf turns to look at him. “You’d be willing to do that, Ryder?”

Ryder nods. “Yes.”

Olaf frowns. “This all seems like a not-great idea to me, but…”

_ Ah-ah, ah-ah. _

“I’m ready to go,” Elsa says to Ryder.

“Okay,” he replies, and turns to the somewhat-corporeal figure. “Lead on, Officer Bjorgman.”

* * *

Kristoff watches as Elsa stops ten feet from the cop car.

“No,” she says, firmly.

“Oh, yeah, she’s not gonna get in that car,” Ryder says. “Lemme go get the van keys.”

He trots back to the group home, leaving Kristoff on the driveway with Elsa. He looks over at her, her face squinching up every now and then as though in response to whatever she’s hearing through the headphones. It’s taking every ounce of his curiosity to ask her exactly what that is.

“Elsa,” Kristoff says cautiously, “have you been in a cop car before?”

It’s a dumb question. He knows she has. He’s read her file.

“Not today.”

“No, not today. But you’ve been in a cop car before, right?”

She nods warily.

“I guess it might be strange for you to go somewhere with a policeman. Is there anything I can do to make you feel more at ease?”

Elsa takes a step towards him. There’s something confusing in her eyes - a bizarrely uplifting lightness that somehow transcends the oddity of the rest of her expression. Kristoff wants to look away and can’t.

Carefully she touches his arm, her fingers making contact with his Three Fjords Police Department issued windbreaker as though to make sure he’s real. “You want what I want,” she says. “You want to bring them home.”

“Yes. I want that very much. It’s not fair that they’re missing. And I’d be really grateful for whatever help you can give me.”

“There are people who are helpers,” Elsa says. “They look at you.”

“Do other people…  _ not _ look at you?” Kristoff asks.

“A lot of people won’t look at me,” Elsa answers. “They look away.”

Kristoff thinks about this. “And helpers don’t do that.”

“Sometimes helpers forget to look at me,” Elsa says. “Sometimes Anna forgets, but not because she isn't a helper. It’s because she’s caught up in remembering, and the person she’s remembering isn’t here anymore.”

“Your sister Anna,” Kristoff says. “I talked to her earlier.”

“She didn’t like that,” Elsa says, and a smile creeps across her face.

“No, she really didn’t,” Kristoff answers, thinking of his early-morning visit to Anna Aren-Dell’s apartment.

“That’s because she’s a helper,” Elsa says.

Ryder returns and indicates one of the group home’s white vans, parked on the other side of the expansive driveway. “I’ll drive. Elsa, you can sit shotgun. I mean, if that’s okay with you, Officer Bjorgman.”

“That sounds fine,” Kristoff says.

Ryder fires up the van and points it down the driveway. As he stops, waiting for traffic to clear, he says, “Which way, Elsa?”

Elsa tilts her head, closing her eyes. “Left.”

For the next twenty-five minutes, Ryder drives the van in and out of Three Fjords. Elsa gives directions. Kristoff watches her face - it’s alive with expression, even though her eyes remain closed.

Eventually the van turns onto Highway 5, which leads towards Southern Isles. The highway itself cuts through beautiful forests, which are dappled now with red, orange, and yellow-leafed trees swaying in the afternoon breeze, before the forests peter out to the rich fields that give Southern Isles its reputation of a prosperous farming community. Some of the fields are full of waving wheat; others feature soybeans still growing and rows and rows of hay and corn.

Kristoff doesn’t know much about farming. His father owns a successful delivery company and his mother writes for the newspaper. He’d grown up hearing stories about his grandfather, who’d been a police officer in Three Fjords decades prior, and decided fairly early on that’s what he wanted to do with his life. So far it hasn’t been the worst decision he’s made.

“Here,” Elsa says suddenly, and the van slows down. Ryder pulls into a dirt track between two of the fields and parks.

Kristoff looks out the window. They’re in the middle of some fields. His heart sinks. Where would a woman be hiding in a field?

“Do we need to get out?” Ryder asks Elsa gently.

For the first time Elsa opens her eyes. “Yes.”

They exit the van. Elsa takes off her headphones and puts them into her sweater pocket. She looks at the field around them and then opens her mouth, singing out four notes:  _ “Ah-ah, ah-ah.” _

The short song resonates in the still, crisp air, carrying over the gently-swaying plants.

_ “Ah-ah, ah-ah.” _ Elsa walks forward into the cornfield.

“Should we… follow?” Ryder asks Kristoff.

“I mean,  _ I’m _ going to follow,” Kristoff answers.

Exchanging a glance, both men follow Elsa into the cornstalks.

* * *

Elsa’s head hurts. The song is so loud; it feels like it’s taking up all of the space inside her body, pushing into her bones and swimming through her veins. Her legs feel so heavy.

She swallows, her throat dry, and tries the song again:  _ “Ah-ah, ah-ah.” _

The response is softer, smaller than Kirstin’s, but it’s still there.

Elsa pushes forward. Her head’s throbbing now. She wishes Anna was with her.  _ “Ah-ah, ah-ah.” _

The response comes back shorter, like Morse code cutting itself off sharply in the middle of a long message. Elsa turns to her left. She drags one leg up from the ground and tries to take another step, but she can’t. It’s like she’s stuck in a puddle of glue.

“I’m trying to  _ help _ you,” Elsa says, frustrated.

Then she looks towards the ground, and realizes that while the song may have brought her to Emilia Haagenstadt, Emilia’s beyond help now.

* * *

Anna storms out of her car, slamming the door behind her, stalking towards the crime scene tape set up at the side of the field. A Three Fjords officer standing there puts his hand out. “Whoa, ma’am, you can’t go in there.”

“My sister’s here,” Anna says, trying to keep her voice level. “I need to see her.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am, all family are being asked to call -”

“Anna!” Officer Kristoff Bjorgman jogs out of the field. “Anna, I’m  _ so _ sorry, I didn’t mean to -”

Anna clenches her fist. “What did you do to my sister?” she asks, each word crisp and polished with the fury that’s been building in her stomach since she left Three Fjords.

“I swear, it was her idea.”

“Elsa wouldn’t go anywhere with a cop,” Anna spits at him.

“I was as surprised as you are.”

“Surprise is not exactly the emotion I’m feeling right now.”

“I know. And I’m really sorry about all of this, but… Elsa did it. She found another missing woman.”

Anna’s prepared remark stalls in her head. “What?”

“I mean, she found a body, but technically…”

“I’m sorry,  _ what?” _ Anna stares at him, trying to figure out if this is all some sick joke. “My sister willingly left her home with a cop and then found a  _ body?” _

“I came to see her at the group home. I wanted to just… talk to her.  _ She _ was the one who told  _ me _ she needed to go somewhere, that she knew where Emilia Haagenstadt was. And it’ll take some time for the necessary tests to be done, but…”

Anna puts her hand to her head. “Where is she?”

“Over there,” Kristoff says, and indicates the group home’s white van, parked to the side of the turnoff. The passenger door is open and Elsa sits with her legs hanging out of the vehicle, drinking a juice box.

“Don’t ever take her out of the group home again,” Anna says, her voice low and firm. “I am her legal guardian and I have not approved extrajudicial outings with police officers. She has made a lot of progress in the last few years, since the last time the cops forced her to go somewhere, and my guess is that you’ve ruined almost all of it with this little jaunt.”

“I didn’t  _ force _ her -”

“Thank you for your time, Officer Bjorgman,” Anna says, and she turns around and walks away from him.

One of the group home techs is in the driver’s seat. He waves at her.

“Did you offer to support this circus?” Anna asks him, looking over Elsa’s shoulder to see his open, pleasant face.

“I knew she wouldn’t get into the cop car,” he answers a bit sheepishly. “I’m sorry. But… we did find someone.”

“I missed you,” Elsa says, and she hands Anna the juice box.

“What am I supposed to do with this?”

Elsa shrugs. “Do you have any pretzels?”

“No.” Anna looks her sister up and down. “Are you okay?”

“Can we get some pretzels?”

“Elsa.”

“You yelled at that cop.”

“No, I was perfectly nice. He just needs to remember that he can’t just yank people out of their houses and take them on trips.”

_ “I _ took  _ him,” _ Elsa says. She takes the juice box back from Anna. “You should be mad at me.”

“I’m not mad at you.”

“I did the helping thing.  _ I _ did something to help today. And he didn’t look at me like I’m crazy.”

“Elsa, you’re not -”

“I know you know that. But your eyes don’t always know.” Elsa hands her the juice box again. “Ryder, is it still ravioli night?”

Ryder - the tech in the driver’s seat, Anna realizes - looks at his watch. “I mean, technically it’s ravioli early evening, so I’d say we’re good.”

“You’re just going to go home?” Anna asks her sister.

“It’s not my home.”

“You’re just going to go… have dinner?”

“You don’t have any pretzels.”

“Elsa.”

“What else is there?” Elsa asks.

A sudden pang of sadness hits Anna.  _ What else is there? _ For Elsa, whose once-large life has shrunk to the repetitive minutiae of group home life, there isn’t anything else.

Until a missing woman at a nature preserve and a body in a cornfield.

“Elsa, if Officer Bjorgman wanted you to help him again… would you?”

“Until the song stops.”

Anna has no fucking clue what her sister means by that, but she knows Elsa’s saying  _ yes _ without actually saying it. “And you’re okay with that?”

“His eyes are different.” Elsa looks up at Anna, studying her face. “Are  _ you _ okay with that?”

Anna’s not quite sure if Elsa’s asking if she’ll accept that Kristoff’s eyes are different or that Elsa will continue to help Kristoff. Either way, Anna knows what the right answer is. “I want you to do what makes you happy.”

“There are no bodies in cornfields that are happy.” Elsa frowns. “But… I can help people get an ending. And maybe if I don’t get anything else, I can have that.”

Anna leans in and kisses Elsa on the forehead. “Okay. As long as you’re safe. But I’m still pissed with Officer Bjorgman.”

“You should be nicer to him,” Elsa says as Ryder starts the van. “You’re going to see him a lot more.”

And once again, Anna’s left speechless by some wisdom delivered by her sister.

She’s never been speechless at a crime scene before, but if adulthood’s taught her anything, it’s that there’s a first time for everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find me on Tumblr as memorysdaughter.


	4. Chapter 4

Elsa smiles and tries to be polite when everyone at the group home asks her questions about the afternoon. Ryder, taking a cue from her, doesn’t say much, either. They eat their ravioli and garlic bread together, and then Ryder goes back to his work and Elsa drifts, brain a-tumble, back to her bedroom.

She sits at her desk and takes out her tablet and stylus. Her fingers itch; they want to make a new drawing. But Elsa’s not ready for that. She thought finding Kirstin would be the end of it. She liked finding Kirstin. Kirstin was alive and that was good.

Finding Emilia was  _ helpful _ but not good. Because Emilia was not alive. And people just don’t die in cornfields, which means there’s something bigger happening. And Elsa’s not ready for that. She doesn’t want anything bigger.

The song tries to wiggle into her ears. Elsa puts her hands flat against the desk and focuses on the little salamander statue in the corner. She calls it  _ Bruni _ after one of the voices she hears. “Bruni, I’m in over my head,” she whispers. “What happens now? How many more do I have to find until the song stops?”

_ You  _ _ do _ _ want to help people, though, Elsa, right? _

“Of course I do. But this is… this is heavy.”

_ Some things worth having are heavy. _

“I can’t carry all of it.”

_ You don’t have to carry it alone. Anna can help. The police officer too. Others. _

“They think I’m crazy.”

At this the salamander statue almost winks at her. _ I think we both know that’s not the most generous of words to describe you, my dear. And not the most interesting. _

“It’s all they see,” Elsa whispers. “If that’s all I’m good for -”

_ It’s not. You’re good for a lot of reasons. Not just because you can do this. And don’t you like helping? _

“I like helping.”

_ So what’s wrong with it? _

“Someone bad had to do that to Emilia. Someone bad took Kirstin out there. I don’t want to find those people.”

_ The world needs a good person to stop a bad person. _

“Why does that good person have to be me?!”

_ Maybe you’re the only one listening. _

“I don’t  _ want _ to be the only one listening! Why can’t  _ everyone _ help?”

_ Some things you just have to do alone. Pick up your pencil. Show them who to look for. _

Elsa sighs, burying her head in her hands.

_ C’mon. Do it. _

“If I do it again, it’s not going to stop,” Elsa says without picking up her head. “I’m going to have to do it again and again and again.”

_ Did you have anything better to do with your time? _

Her fingertips itch. The song pulses at the back of her neck. On the table, the stylus seems to glow with an otherworldly light.

There’s a knock at her door and Elsa raises her head with a sigh of relief. The song dies away as suddenly as it had come, and the stylus is nothing more than a tool upon the table.

“Miss Elsa?” Gerda sticks her head in. “There’s a phone call for you.”

She holds out the cordless phone. Elsa takes it and hesitantly puts it up to her ear. Sometimes there are people on the phone she doesn’t want to talk to. “Hello?”

“Hello, Elsa.” The voice is warm and comforting, and Elsa immediately recognizes it: the woman from the Northuldra enclave. “My name is Yelana. Is this an okay time to call you?”

No one’s ever asked that before.

“Yes,” Elsa says.

“I really liked meeting you the other night,” Yelana says. “You did a very brave thing, finding that woman.”

“She wasn’t supposed to be there.”

“That’s right. And I’m so glad you were able to get her home safely, even though she was lost.” Yelana pauses. “Ryder told me you found someone else tonight.”

“She wasn’t supposed to be there either.”

“No, and I’m sure it was very upsetting to not be able to bring her home safely.”

_ Was _ it upsetting? It was probably supposed to be upsetting.

“Ryder says you were very brave,” Yelana goes on. “Would you ever like to come and visit us out at the Northuldra enclave? There are a lot of brave people here.”

“Like Maren,” Elsa says, although she’s not sure why she knows that.

“Yes,” Yelana agrees, a smile in her voice. “Maren is very brave.”

Elsa thinks about Yelana’s request. “If I came to visit you… would you ask me to do anything?”

_ Like follow the song. _

“No. You wouldn’t be forced to do anything you wouldn’t want to do,” Yelana says. “You could just visit. Spend a day with us - or not even a day, just some time. And if you didn’t like it, you could leave whenever you wanted. And you wouldn’t have to come back if you didn’t want to.”

“What if… something bad happened?”

“We have many talented people out here,” Yelana says. “Doctors, nurses. Healers. Gentle people. Whatever you might need, someone can help you.”

“You wouldn’t call…” Elsa’s voice trails off, her mind suddenly full of flashing red-and-blue lights.

“I told your sister the same thing,” Yelana says. “I would never call the police to help you, Elsa. No one here would. We respect you as a person and want  _ you _ to be in charge of your own destiny.”

_ Destiny. _ That word tastes sweet in Elsa’s mouth. She rolls it around like a hard candy.

“Okay,” she says. “I’ll come visit you.”

“Wonderful,” Yelana says, and she sounds genuinely pleased. “When would you like to come?”

Elsa looks around, unsure what she’s missing. Elsa-in-another-life had a calendar, a schedule. Elsa-in-this-life rarely knows what day it is, except for Saturdays, which are marked by pancakes. Time has ceased to matter much.

“Elsa?”

“Tomorrow? Can I come tomorrow?”

“Of course you can. We’d be delighted to have you.”

Yelana says something about needing to talk to the people who care for Elsa, so she goes down the hall and finds Olaf, handing the phone to him wordlessly. Her fingers are buzzing. She hurries back down the hallway to her room and slides back into her chair. The stylus practically jumps back into her fingers and it starts moving across the tablet screen.

_ Good, _ Elsa hears Bruni say.  _ Good job. _

“Nobody says that to me.”

_ They should. Do you think you do a bad job? _

“Normally I don’t do a job at all.”

_ I think that’s something that should change. _

Elsa bows her head over the screen, the face of a woman starting to appear. Who is she? Elsa has no idea, but it doesn’t matter anymore.

_ Good job. You’re helping. You’re carrying it. I know it’s heavy, but it won’t always be like this. _

The voices usually lie, but tonight Elsa chooses to believe Bruni. Tonight she chooses to do this next right thing.

* * *

Olaf calls around nine that evening, when Anna’s sitting in front of a “Hoarders” marathon, eating ice cream in her pajamas.

“Your sister’s going on a field trip tomorrow,” he says without much preamble.

“With the cop? Because I told him to back off.”

“No, not with Officer Bjorgman,” Olaf says. “With Yelana, from the Northuldra enclave. Apparently she cleared it with you?”

Anna sets her ice cream bowl down, remembering the phone call she’d made shortly before her first meeting with the infuriating Officer Bjorgman. “Yes, I did speak to her, and I said it would be okay for Elsa to go with them… if she wanted to.”

“She wants to,” Olaf says. “One of their people is coming to get her in the morning.”

“How does she seem?”

“She was drawing up until a little bit ago, maybe a half hour, then she went to bed. But she laid her clothes out and asked Gerda to make her a lunch to take.”

“Wow,” Anna says. “That’s… more planning than Elsa’s done in… in a long time.”

“You know, on one hand, it’s awful that she’s finding missing women, some of whom are dead,” Olaf says. “But on the other hand, it’s bringing out an entirely new side of Elsa.”

“I don’t think I want to encourage further dead-woman-finding.”

“I don’t think it’s a thing we’re going to control one way or another,” Olaf says.

“Why are you always right?”

“I’ve been around the block a few times.”

“You have?”

“It’s a very specific, localized block,” Olaf clarifies. “Just big enough for me.”

Anna smiles. “I feel like we all have one of those.”

“I think we do. Maybe this is Elsa’s block.”

“Couldn’t she have picked something less… unsavory?”

Olaf chuckles. “I think it works for her, when you consider it.”

They hang up after some brief pleasantries, and Anna tries to go back to her TV break. Olaf’s words rush through her head, though.  _ I think it works for her, when you consider it. _

The meaning slams into her suddenly, so poignant and twisting that it nearly takes her breath away. Elsa, who  _ can’t _ come home, is finding women somewhat like her - women who  _ haven’t  _ come home. And maybe if Elsa can’t ever come home, maybe somehow this is the world trying to make things right somehow, to balance the scales that have been out of whack since Elsa first dropped away from sanity.  _ Someone _ gets to come home, in some way, even if it’s not Elsa.

Anna finds she can’t go back to the TV after that.

* * *

Elsa wakes up  _ early _ early, even though she knows she doesn’t need to be up. She gets dressed slowly and takes her time brushing out her hair before braiding it, snapping the elastic around the bottom with firm, steady fingers. She puts on her navy high-top sneakers and ties the laces. The entire time she wonders why she’s so nervous. She feels like a little kid on their first day of school, excited and terrified at the same time.

_ Afraid of the unknown. Into the unknown. _

Olaf’s the only one up when she makes her way down to the main hub of the group home - the big, open living room-kitchen-dining area space. He leans out of the top half of the Dutch door at the nurses’ station. “I think you’re awake a little early, Miss Aren-Dell.”

“I couldn’t stay asleep.”

“Then I guess you’re awake right on time.” He smiles at her. “You look nice.”

Elsa looks down at herself. “I look like I do every day.”

“Maybe you look nice every day.”

“I don’t.”

Images of a different Elsa, a feral Elsa, a sick Elsa - they flow through her head. She’s worn similar clothes for years, but she has very distinct memories of times she was dirty, unwashed, going to pieces. No one would ever say she looked nice then.

“Do you want some breakfast?” Olaf asks.

Elsa snaps back to the here-and-now. “Yes, please.”

They sit at the table together. Elsa eats her Cheerios and Olaf has what Elsa guesses is his third cup of coffee.

“Olaf,” she says, “why do you do this?”

“Drink coffee?”

“No. Run a group home.”

Olaf tilts his head. “I don’t know if I’d be good at anything else.”

“Did you ever  _ try _ anything else?”

“Lots of things. I was an event planner.”

“You were?” Elsa smiles. “I bet you were really good at that.”

“No, I was terrible.”

“But you make all of our holidays really nice here.”

Olaf smiles, accepting the praise quietly. “I loved being around people and seeing celebrations and making them happy, but my heart wasn’t really in it. Everyone I worked for had everything they needed. Nothing wrong with that, but I knew there were people in the community who were sad and lonely and not being taken care of, and I knew I could help them.”

“And that’s what you like? Helping people?”

Olaf nods.

Elsa takes a bite of Cheerios. After she swallows, she says, “Do you ever get tired of people being too heavy?”

“Too heavy?”

“Like…” Elsa tilts her head. “Like their problems are too much for you, and you want to stop because you can’t carry all of it.”

“That’s why I have a team,” Olaf says. “Gerda, Inga, Ryder, Halvard - everybody. I don’t have to carry all of it; we can carry it together. That makes it easier.”

Elsa puts her spoon on the table. She brings up her tablet from its place on her lap, clicks it on, and sets it down in front of Olaf. “I think… I think she’s the next one. Can you send this to Officer Bjorgman?”

Olaf looks down at the drawing in front of him. Like most of Elsa’s work, it’s precisely detailed, almost photo-quality. A dark-skinned woman with bright brown eyes, deep red lips, and curly brown hair looks up at him, her expression relaxed and happy. “Do you know her?”

“No.”

“But you think Officer Bjorgman will know who she is?”

Elsa nods.

“Okay. I’ll send it over to him.”

“Thank you.”

“Is this… too heavy for you, Elsa?”

“I have a team.”

Olaf smiles. “Yes, you do.”

“It’s a good team.”

“The best. We might even need to get shirts.”

* * *

At nine o’clock, a dirty, well-loved pickup truck makes its way up the driveway. Elsa sits on the front porch of the group home, holding her backpack on her lap. Her legs bounces up and down. She isn’t sure what she’s so anxious about.

_ Yes, you are. _

“I want them to like me.”

_ They’ll like you. _

“You don’t know that.”

_ I know a lot of things, don’t I? _

Elsa has to admit that’s true, but she swallows the words as a tall, willowy woman with two dark braids approaches the group home.

“Hi,” the woman says, her voice friendly. “I’m -”

“Maren,” Elsa says.

“Yes, I’m Maren.” The woman looks surprised, and Elsa’s cheeks flush.

“I just… I talked to Yelana.”

“And she told you I’d be coming.” Maren smiles. “That’s wonderful. Are you ready to go?”

Elsa nods.

“Awesome. Let’s head out.”

For a moment Elsa freezes. Maren doesn’t need to get clearance to take her somewhere? Isn’t there a responsible adult or something who needs to say it’s okay for Elsa to leave?

“Is there something wrong?”

“Yesterday I went somewhere… and I kind of… got in trouble for it.”

Maren’s pleasant expression doesn’t change. “Do you want me to check in with someone here and make sure it’s okay we leave?”

_ I’m an adult and I should be able to leave a place when I want to. _

_ But you’re not a normal adult. _

Elsa squeezes the strap of her backpack, hard enough to feel the woven material dig into her palm.

“Hey, it’s cool,” Maren says. “Why don’t I poke my head and introduce myself? If I’m lucky, maybe someone will offer me a pastry or something.”

“Okay,” Elsa whispers.

Maren smiles and opens the door to the group home.

_ Stupid. I should have just gone with her. I’m an adult. _

_ And wind up with Anna yelling at someone else? _

After a few minutes the door opens again and Maren and Olaf come out together. Both are smiling, and Elsa relaxes enough to release her grip on the backpack strap. Her hand throbs.

“All set?” Olaf asks kindly. “Maren was kind enough to give me the contact info for where you’ll be today, and I gave her my number here as well. Have a good time - we’ll see you whenever you’re ready to come back.”

_ Oh. It’s okay. _

Elsa blinks at Olaf. “Come back whenever.”

“Mm-hmm. There isn’t too much going on today, although I might start talking with everyone about what we’d like our decorations to look like for Halloween,” Olaf says. “Nothing big. Have a good time.”

Maren smiles at Elsa.

Elsa looks back and forth between them. “Okay,” she says, and stands up.

Maren’s truck is older, but it’s clean and smells like flowers. Elsa buckles her seatbelt and sits very still, holding her backpack on her lap.

“Would you like to talk, or do you prefer a quiet car ride?” Maren asks as she backs the truck out of the parking spot.

“Can…  _ you _ talk?” Elsa hates how scrawny her voice sounds.

“Of course,” Maren says. “Why don’t I tell you about where we’re going?”

Elsa nods.

“I know you were out on the edge of the preserve, near the campground, and that’s really a beautiful place. I love to spend time near the river. I think I could watch a river - or a waterfall - for hours. It’s always changing, and the water makes the rocks smooth and shiny.”

Elsa tries to take a deep breath. Maren’s voice is calming.

“We have a big open area where people can set up their living spaces, if they’re staying out at the preserve, and next to it, a huge field of wildflowers. There’s some girls out there who make beautiful flower crowns.”

“Flower crowns,” Elsa murmurs.

“Oh, and we have horses, too,” Maren goes on. “My brother’s really good with the horses. He says if he wasn’t working at the group home, he’d spend all his time with them.”

It all sounds so beautiful that Elsa isn’t sure it’s real, isn’t sure she’s really in a truck on her way to a wonderful nature preserve and is instead just back in her little room hallucinating this lovely woman and the words coming out of said lovely woman’s mouth. And that hurts, because she really wants it to be real. If things like finding a dead body in a cornfield got to be real, surely at least  _ one _ nice thing can be real. Can’t it?

Frantically Elsa tries to figure out how to tell real from not-real without alerting Maren that she’s coming wildly unglued in the passenger seat. All of the usual “tells” won’t work - seeing if someone else reacts to Maren is useless when it’s just the two of them… Elsa can’t take a picture of Maren because her tablet’s back at the group home… she can’t touch Maren because they’re basically strangers -

“What’s the capital of Lithuania?” Elsa blurts out.

Maren’s gentle voice stops in the middle of a sentence about her brother and his horses. “The capital of Lithuania? I don’t know.”

“Vilnius. It’s Vilnius.” Elsa wraps her hand around her backpack strap, feeling both relieved and like she’s ruining everything.  _ Hallucinations will always act like they know everything, _ she can hear her patient doctor inform her.  _ If you want to know if someone’s real or not, ask them a question that’s not common knowledge, something out-of-the-ordinary. It doesn’t always work, but it might help you in some situations. _

“I didn’t know that,” Maren says with a smile. “Vilnius. Awesome.”

She turns left onto a gravel road that dips away from the main highway, passing by brilliantly-colored trees sporting their autumn best in shades of yellow, red, and orange. A big brown sign on by the side of the road announces “Northuldra Enclave within Three Fjords. No trespassing. Visitors see the Main Gatehouse for entrance.”

“We’re here,” Maren says. “I have to leave the truck up by the gatehouse, but it’s a nice day for a walk. Is that okay?”

Elsa nods as the gatehouse comes into view. It’s a long stone structure that completely blocks the roadway. There are a few other vehicles parked to one side, including two golf carts and a bigger truck with a horse trailer attached. Maren pulls into one of the marked parking spots.

“You ready?” Maren asks. “I think Yelana’s going to meet us on the other side of the gatehouse, and then we can take a walk or do whatever else you’d like.”

“Okay,” Elsa says softly.

She puts on her backpack and follows Maren up to the wide wooden door of the gatehouse. Maren takes a set of keys from her pocket and opens the door. Elsa is surprised to see that there is no  _ house _ \- the forest and the gravel road continue immediately on the other side of the door. She freezes.

Maren turns around and sees Elsa standing on the “town” side of the doorway. “It’s okay,” she says. “I know it looks like a building, but it’s just an illusion. There used to be a visitors’ center up here, but we decided we didn’t really need one a few years back. We took it down and built just a basic façade with an entrance. It can be really confusing, I know.”

_ Maren isn’t a hallucination, so if she’s standing on the other side of the door then that means there really  _ _ is _ _ another side to the door so it’s okay if I go over there. _ But Elsa’s feet won’t move.

Sensing some sort of discomfort, Maren approaches the door and holds out her hand. “I know it can be scary to be in a new place. You’re doing a great job.”

_ If I go through that door I’m going to be okay. _

Elsa reaches out and takes Maren’s hand. She takes a deep breath and steps through the door. It closes behind her with an authoritative  _ thud _ and she looks up into the leaf-laden boughs of the trees around her.

_ Afraid of the unknown. Into the unknown. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find me on Tumblr as memorysdaughter.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one gets into a bit of what happened to Elsa before she came back to live in Three Fjords. It's a little dark.
> 
> The song at the end is "Nuku Nuku," a Finnish lullaby.

Still clinging to Maren’s hand, Elsa looks up into the trees overhead. They’re all yellow-leaved, like an archway of sunshine cradling the path in a golden-bathed hand. It’s stunningly beautiful, blazingly beautiful, the kind of thing Elsa’s slowly learning can exist in real life and not just in hallucinations. She tries to walk at a normal human pace but it’s almost too lovely to take in, and she finds herself stopping in the middle of the road.

“This is… so lovely it hurts,” Elsa says softly. She doesn’t know how else to say it.

“I feel the same way,” Maren says. “Sometimes it’s hard to want to leave the enclave, simply because everything here is so perfect.”

Elsa turns to look at Maren, their hands still intertwined. “Does that worry you?”

Maren frowns. “No. It makes me want to keep working to preserve such a special place like this, so that people can come and see it.”

Elsa turns her face up towards the golden leaves and lets the light play over her face. “When I used to feel things like this… they weren’t real. So every time I felt good, I knew I should feel scared instead. And then things stopped feeling good at all.”

“How do you feel right now?”

Elsa thinks about this. “Apprehensive. A little excited.”

“I can work with that,” Maren says, a smile crossing her face. “And I can help you remember that if things feel really good, it’s because they _are_ really good.”

“I’d like that.”

Maren squeezes Elsa’s hand. “I think Yelana’s going to meet us at the bottom of the hill. Are you ready to keep going?”

Elsa nods, and she takes the next step forward. And the next. And the next.

The road dips down through further groves of leaf-laden trees, red and gold and orange playing overhead like shimmering stained glass. To her credit, Maren seems to understand Elsa’s need for extra processing time, and stays quiet as they walk, though every now and then she squeezes Elsa’s hand as though to say, _I’m here if you need me._

Eventually the road flattens out at the bottom of a short hill and a figure comes into view a little further ahead. Upon seeing them, Yelana strides forward, a smile on her face. “Elsa! Good morning. I’m so glad you’re here.”

“Hello,” Elsa says, and she puts out her hand for a handshake, disengaging her fingers from Maren’s for the first time.

Yelana shakes it, her grip firm but not painful. “I thought we might start with a tour of the enclave, and then have some lunch. Does that sound all right?”

Elsa nods.

“Is there anything in particular you’d like to see?”

“The waterfall,” Elsa says without hesitation, stunned at how quickly the answer came out of her mouth. She feels her cheeks get hot. She’s not used to demanding things.

But Yelana nods as though it’s an ordinary request. “Of course. We’ll set aside plenty of time for you to visit there today.”

“Okay,” Elsa whispers. She feels a small smile start to grow on her face.

And as Yelana and Maren turn to lead her further into the enclave, Elsa finds herself simply taking the next step. And the next. And the next. All with that same smile on her face.

* * *

“Sunny Pines, Olaf speaking.”

“Did you tell them about her seizures?”

“Good morning, Miss Aren-Dell. I _am_ having a lovely day, thank you for asking.”

A sigh. “I’m sorry, Olaf. Good morning.”

Olaf chuckles. “It’s all right. I forgive your rudeness this one time. Now, I believe you were asking if I let the Northuldra know about Elsa’s seizures.”

“Yes,” Anna replies, a little sheepishly.

“I spoke with the young woman who accompanied her out there - Maren. I gave her some signs to look out for that might suggest Elsa is out of sorts or headed for a seizure. I wouldn’t have sent her out there without someone I knew could be trusted to help her if something happens.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” Anna says. “I should have known. I’m sorry, Olaf - I’m just… this is all so bizarre, everything Elsa’s doing.”

“I don’t know if it’s _all_ bizarre,” Olaf says.

“Finding dead bodies is bizarre.”

“Yes, that’s true,” Olaf agrees, “but a person wanting to go somewhere new, meet new people, and see new things isn’t all that bizarre. I think what you’re saying is that it’s bizarre for Elsa, and I don’t know if I’d agree. It’s just… not what Elsa’s been doing _lately.”_

Anna is quiet for a few beats. “Olaf, is it wrong that I’m having trouble remembering what Elsa as a person is really like anymore?”

“No,” Olaf says. “You’ve been stuck in the middle of her illness for a long time now, and you had a lot of responsibility placed on you very quickly that you didn’t ask for. It’s possible that you’ve been so focused on handling her condition that you got bogged down in it.”

“I don’t like that,” Anna says.

“Well, the good news is, it doesn’t have to stay that way,” Olaf tells her. “You can get to know your sister and who she is now, beyond her illness. She’s an amazing person.”

“I know _that,”_ Anna says, and Olaf hears a smile in her voice.

“We love having her here,” Olaf says. “She’s a very gifted musician with a beautiful voice. She likes learning to cook. She’s gentle and kind, and we often find her in the rooms of a few of our residents who are in a minimally conscious state, holding their hands.”

“Really?” Anna’s voice gets tight with emotion.

“Gerda taught her how to give them hand massages with lotion and how to file their nails,” Olaf goes on. “I think she likes the human connection without the pressure of conversation.”

“I never see any of that. She’s always just standing in the backyard, looking out over the fence.”

“And that’s a part of her too. You only get to see her for a short portion of the week - which is fine; that’s how your relationship is now. We’re lucky to have her all week long, so we can see everything that’s happening for her. And Anna, she’s changed so much since she first got here. I know that might be hard for you to believe.”

“I guess we all change over time, and it was silly not to think Elsa’s the same way,” Anna says. She sighs. “I wish things were different.”

“I think we all have things in our lives that are hard to accept, things we didn’t ask for, things we can’t change. What shows us who we are is how we deal with those things.”

“How did you get to be so wise?”

“I watch a lot of TED Talks,” Olaf replies easily.

“Olaf.”

“All right, all right.” Olaf laughs. “I think about how I’d want to be treated in certain situations, and I make sure the people I care about are safe and healthy and loved. It’s just that easy.”

“You’re a good man.”

“Well, I’m okay.”

“I guess I should get back to work,” Anna says with a sigh. “Thank you for taking care of my sister.”

“It’s my pleasure,” Olaf says.

After Anna hangs up, Olaf looks back down at the tablet on the table in front of him. Since Elsa left with Maren, he’s been unable to take his eyes off the drawing of the dark-haired woman. He knows he should call Officer Bjorgman, tell him about the latest potential lead, but there’s something captivating, nearly hypnotizing, about the picture.

He takes the tablet into the nurses’ station and sets it on top of Elsa’s information binder. _Soon,_ he promises himself. _I’ll call the officer soon._

* * *

“Elsa,” Yelana says as they walk down another long hill, “what did you think about meeting us the other night?”

Elsa thinks about this. The night’s faded into something like a blur, like seeing the ground and the forest fade in and out of view with the small circle of Anna’s flashlight pointing the way. She knows it happened, she knows that what she did was incredible and confusing and improbable all at once. That there’s no way it should have happened. That even _she_ doesn’t know how she did it, and that scares her. But she does know one thing -

“You were comforting.”

Yelana doesn’t laugh, which is what Elsa was expecting. “I’m glad we could be what you needed.”

“You were nice to me,” Elsa says, which is just cover for what she really wants to say: _you were nice to me and I don’t understand why._

Just in sight of a small group of buildings, Yelana stops and takes Elsa’s hand. “I need to tell you something - something that might change how you feel about being here with us. And you’re definitely free to leave if you want to.”

Elsa blinks. She can’t think of anything Yelana might say that would make her want to leave this beautiful place, with these kind people. Maybe it’s a hallucination.

She looks over at Maren. Maren’s face is still warm, but now it shows a bit of concern.

Elsa frowns and takes a step back from both of them.

“It’s nothing awful,” Yelana says. “But I knew your mother. She was… Northuldra, one of us. She spent a great deal of time out here before she married your father. I don’t know if she ever told you that.”

Images of Iduna fly through Elsa’s mind. Her mother’s soft hands, her long hair, the way she’d sing to her daughters to lull them to sleep. Little fragments slip in: the silver-backed hairbrush on Iduna’s dressing table; the smell of her lipstick; her laugh; the silken scarf she always wore in cold weather. Then the rest hits her full force: her mother’s expression when her parents came to bail her out of jail during her sophomore year at college; her mother crying; the pills scattered on the bathroom floor…

“No,” Elsa gets out, but she’s not sure what she’s disagreeing with. What does it matter if her mother was Northuldra? It doesn’t change anything. Or does it? She can’t figure it out. “I don’t… I don’t want you… to talk about her.”

That makes sense. Right? If they don’t talk about her mother then she can’t remember everything that happened right before her parents died and then she doesn’t have to think about everything that happened, and it gets to stay in the back of her mind where she’s locked it all away.

“I understand,” Yelana says, and some of the fog disappears from Elsa’s mind. Her vision sharpens again and the sun from the swaying trees overhead dapples her face and hands in calming patterns. “I’m sorry for mentioning it.”

“Do you still want to stay?” Maren asks gently.

Elsa’s heart is beating fast in her ears and honestly, no, she doesn’t want to be here anymore. She doesn’t want to be anywhere. She simply wants to stop existing for a little while, to be nothing more than a white space among the colorful rest of the world.

But they’ve been so kind. They’re still being kind. They’re asking her what she wants instead of just doing _for_ her the way so many in her life do. And they’re both still looking at her, instead of _through_ her.

“I need… I need…"

“What if we got you a drink?” Yelana suggests. “Water? Juice?”

Elsa nods.

“Okay. We’re almost to the meetinghouse, and we can take a break.”

Maren holds out her hand again, looking hopefully at Elsa.

The ground feels solid again. Elsa reaches out and grasps Maren’s hand with hers.

_Into the unknown. Afraid of the unknown._

* * *

Kristoff looks at his case board, drinking the last of his quickly-cooling tea. He stares at Emilia Haagenstaadt’s photo, thinking how absolutely wild it is that yesterday, he had no idea if he’d ever find any of the case subjects, and now… and now he had, just not in the way he wanted.

He checks his phone again - no messages from the coroner. He’d asked for the results as quickly as possible. He was dying - no, wrong word - absolutely frantic - to find any clues that might lead him to the rescue of other women.

 _Or at least, an ending for their families,_ Kristoff thinks. Other officers had handled giving the news to Emilia’s loved ones. Kristoff’s sergeant thought it would be better if the information didn’t come directly from someone who was working with a schizophrenic-slash-psychic.

“She got it right, didn’t she?” Kristoff remembers asking.

“She did,” his sergeant was forced to agree. “But that doesn’t mean we need to spread it around town. We’ll tell the family we received an anonymous tip. Which, technically, we did.”

Kristoff looks back at his desk. Elsa Aren-Dell’s file sits on the edge.

He’s read parts of it before, but he hasn’t done the full “deep dive.” Maybe it’s time to see where it all started.

_Incident Report #JB401A: Avalor University Police Station_

_A young woman, identified as Elsa Aren-Dell, age 19, came to the police station at approximately 11:30 pm. She was dressed in casual clothing that was ripped in many places and showed dirt and grass stains. Her hair was messy. She was not wearing shoes. Several of her fingernails were missing. She had lacerations in multiple places on her body: knees, ribs, head._

_Her behavior was distinctly odd. She seemed unable to look at anyone in the room, but kept her head moving so that her field of vision went from object to object. She refused to let anyone come near her. Officer D. Amello called medical services._

_Ms. Aren-Dell was able to be coaxed into the conference room by Officer T. LaBossa. She informed Officer LaBossa that she had been sexually assaulted by someone on campus. She said she knew his name, but she couldn’t remember it. She said she was going to be in trouble._

_Officer LaBossa attempted to tell Ms. Aren-Dell that she was not in trouble, nor would she be in trouble. Officer LaBossa told Ms. Aren-Dell that reporting an incident was a safe and good thing to do, so that Ms. Aren-Dell could be protected and receive the correct treatment._

_EMTs from Avalor Central Hospital arrived five minutes later and Paramedic N. Giobueno stood in the conference room doorway to talk to Ms. Aren-Dell, since she would not let him get any closer. Paramedic Giobueno said that he and his partner, Paramedic A. Sallo-Gosto, could take Ms. Aren-Dell to the hospital to get proper treatment for her injuries, and also to be examined. Ms. Aren-Dell stared at the paramedics for more than a minute without speaking. When Paramedic Giobueno attempted to engage Ms. Aren-Dell in conversation, she did not reply._

_Paramedic Sallo-Gosto approached Ms. Aren-Dell and informed the officers and her partner paramedic that Ms. Aren-Dell appeared to be in a catatonic state. Paramedic Sallo-Gosto brought Ms. Aren-Dell’s arm up into the air and Ms. Aren-Dell not only did not resist, the arm stayed raised._

_After a short discussion between the paramedics and Officer LaBossa and myself, it was determined that the best plan of action was to escort Ms. Aren-Dell to Avalor Central Hospital for treatment and examination. Officers could interview Ms. Aren-Dell at the hospital at the earliest convenience._

_Ms. Aren-Dell was taken out of the police station at approximately midnight._

_This incident report is correct to the best of my recollections._

_Signed,_

_Officer Dain Moskovitz_

Kristoff flicks through the next few pages, but finds no evidence that any officer had done a follow-up interview with Elsa. There were several photos added by hospital staff, and an attached note saying a rape kit was sent to the appropriate forensic authorities.

The next report was from six months later.

_Incident Report #JC311A: Avalor University Police_

_At 3:40 am, Officer B. Salowit and I were called to intervene at a party that had gotten out of hand. We arrived at 150 Jagauti Place in the Fraternity District at 3:51 am. As we entered, we noticed a great deal of alcohol containers, receptacles for alcohol, and drug paraphernalia across the lawn and in the front rooms of the house. There were approximately 90 individuals still on the house’s main floor. Loud music was playing._

_Officer Salowit used his megaphone to instruct party-goers to turn off the music. After they did so, we went through the students individually, issuing citations as necessary for alcohol and/or drug possession. Students who did not live at the house were instructed to disperse._

_I asked Benito Salabien, president of the fraternity, if he would permit a search of his premises. Salabien acquiesced, and Officer Salowit and I did a sweep of the first floor before going up to the second floor. I was the one who entered the second-floor bathroom. The room was not illuminated when I entered. My flashlight beam discovered a young woman lying motionless on the bathroom floor. I vocally identified myself and came forward, reaching down to feel for a pulse. I found one, but the young woman was unconscious._

_I informed Officer Salowit that we would require the assistance of medical services, and he made that call. I attempted to wake the young woman. Officer Salowit turned on the overhead light and we became aware that the young woman was surrounded by open bottles of pills, and there were pills spilled across the bathroom floor. Upon looking at her, I observed that the young woman appeared to be six months pregnant._

_Medical services arrived and began working on the young woman._

_I went back downstairs and asked Salanbien if he recognized the young woman by her description. He said he did not. At that time other members of the fraternity were also present in the living room, and upon asking them individually, I learned that none of them recognized her._

_Medical services transported the young woman to Avalor Central Hospital._

_I issued a citation to the fraternity and Officer Salowit and I left the premises. I went to the hospital to find out any further information about the unconscious young woman._

_At the hospital I spoke to Nurse Lin Klaff. She said that she recognized the young woman as Elsa Aren-Dell, who had been treated at the hospital six months prior. I thanked Nurse Klaff for her time and returned to the station._

_This information is correct to the best of my recollection._

_Signed,_ _  
_ _Officer Ariadne Gomez_

The police report is followed by a printout of lab results from Avalor Central Hospital and a treatment report. Luckily for Kristoff, not a medical professional by any stretch of the words, half the page is written in plain English. Elsa’s blood showed levels of psychotropic drugs, cocaine, and what Kristoff assumes is what made her suicide attempt possible: a high dose of a generic painkiller.

He reads over the treatments she received: gastric lavage, activated charcoal, dialysis, intubation, induced coma. He notes that she entered the hospital early on a Saturday morning and was not released from the medical unit until two and a half weeks later.

There’s a handwritten note from a nurse at the bottom of the treatment notes: _When speaking with Elsa, I asked her if she knew she had been pregnant. She said no. I told her that she had been approximately 23 weeks along, and that she had miscarried. She did not respond, and showed no emotional response to this information._

Kristoff leans back. He doesn’t want to read any more of the reports. He knows Elsa’s story only gets worse.

His phone rings, and Kristoff takes a deep breath, hoping it’ll be the coroner’s office with information on Emilia’s case. But the number is an unfamiliar one.

“Officer Bjorgmann, Three Fjords Police Department.”

“Good morning, Officer Bjorgman. This is Olaf Whitsnow, from Sunny Pines.”

“Mr. Olaf - it’s good to hear from you. How can I help you?”

“I believe Ms. Aren-Dell has drawn the next individual she’s going to find,” Olaf answers.

Kristoff’s heart seizes. He can’t. He can’t go and look Elsa in the eye again, knowing what had happened to her.

“Officer?”

“Sorry, Mr. Olaf, I was just considering what my next steps would be,” Kristoff says smoothly. “Could you send me a copy of the drawing?”

“Of course.”

Kristoff gives Olaf his email address. “Once I check the photo against our missing persons database, I can give you further advice on what our next steps will be. Do you think Elsa would be willing to help me again?”

“I can’t say,” Olaf answers. “She’s out on a field trip this morning, but I can ask her when she returns.”

“Oh,” Kristoff says, surprised. “Okay. Sure.”

“I’ll send you the picture,” Olaf says. “Hopefully it will be enough to get you pointed in the right direction.”

“Thank you.”

They hang up, and Kristoff waits patiently, staring again at his Missing Persons board. When his computer _dings,_ alerting him to a new message, he clicks on the attachment immediately. A drawing of a young woman, brown eyes, brown hair, red-lipped smile, appears.

Kristoff doesn’t have to look up at his board. He knows this woman. Her picture is posted next to Emilia’s.

_Alison del Mar._

* * *

Yelana shows Elsa to a rocking chair on the outside of Falling Star Lodge, and Elsa sits. She feels a little weak, a little weird, but she’s determined not to show it. She holds her backpack on her lap, wrapping her fingers around the straps.

“I’ll get you a drink,” Yelana says. “Excuse me.”

Maren sits down in a rocking chair next to Elsa’s. “You’re doing really well,” Maren says softly.

Elsa squeezes her backpack straps and looks down at her feet. She doesn’t feel like she’s doing well. She feels like she’s upside down.

Maren seems to understand that conversation isn’t what Elsa wants, and so they rock in silence for a few beats. Then Maren begins humming, something low and soft.

The melody reaches Elsa’s ears. She closes her eyes and without meaning to, her mouth forms the words that match.

_“Sleep, sleep, little grasstail bird_

_A tired, so tired, wagtail bird_

_Sleep well in the grass_

_Lay down on the good earth…”_

She opens her eyes and looks up at Maren.

“How did you know that song?” Maren asks gently.

“My mother sang it to me,” Elsa answers, feeling like her mouth and her body are disconnected.

Maren smiles, and she takes up the melody again, singing the words in a language Elsa doesn’t speak. When she finishes, she says, “It’s _Nuku Nuku._ A Northuldra lullaby.”

Elsa frowns and tries to figure out what else to say.

The door to the lodge opens and Yelana reappears with two cups. “I didn’t ask what you wanted, Elsa, so I brought you water and tea. I hope one of those is all right.”

Elsa nods, still distracted by the song in her head. The lullaby overlaps the notes of the song that drives her to find the missing women, wraps around it, and settles itself in. She brings one of the cups to her mouth and takes a drink of hot tea. It burns down her throat, not unpleasantly, and she stares out at the waving bounty of autumn colors.

Neither Yelana nor Maren speaks, and Elsa tilts her head, the leaves waving in the breeze to the tune of the two songs now flowing through her veins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find me on Tumblr as memorysdaughter.


End file.
